Nigeria's situation beyond partisan politics - Obasanjo

Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo said on Wednesday that the country's current degenerative situation was "beyond party politics and demands that everyone be on top of the game".

He said the country had lost track of nation-building, insisting, "Until we do things right in nation-building, we can't do anything good. well in this country".

Mr. Obasanjo made the remarks as a special guest of honor at Babcock University's 20th Undergraduate Conference and 11th Postgraduate Convening Conference.

Featured speaker Kingsley Moghalu, former CBN Deputy Governor, spoke on the theme; "Knowledge, vision, passion and innovation in the context of Nigeria's development."

The event was held at the University Auditorium in Ilishan-Remo, Ogun State.

Mr. Obasanjo remarked that the situation in Nigeria has become so precarious that "no one can say they have a solution to the problems".

Moghalu talks about innovation

During his lecture, Moghalu noted that the solution to Nigeria's dire economic situation and currency crisis is to scale up innovation. He said such intervention can “break the structural dependence of the Nigerian economy as an import and consumer driven economy”.

He said: "Innovation-driven economies remain competitive and adapt to the needs of the future, while resource-dependent economies like ours risk being left behind by global trends. and the market and thus condemn our citizens to poverty.

“Nigeria has a national science, technology and innovation policy. The federal government has several agencies related to technology and innovation, but these public sector efforts have had no impact. impact of innovation on the Nigerian economy.”

Mr. Moghalu, who is now the President of the Institute for Governance and Economic Transformation (IGET), spoke about his presidential campaign in the 2019 elections and how he proposed the creation of an initial capital fund of 500 billion naira for innovation and start-up. -up business, to be managed by the private sector.

"For an innovation-driven economy to thrive in Nigeria, we need to create social consensus. Innovation and its practical applications in society need to be popularized, and specific awareness raised as a pathway mainstay towards the development of Nigeria,” he added.

knowledge society

Mr. Moghalu also explained that "to secure our future as a country, Nigeria must increasingly become a knowledge society".

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) states that knowledge societies are those that have the capacity to identify, produce, process, transform, disseminate and to use information to construct and apply knowledge to human development.

Continuing his remarks, Mr. Moghalu said that the richest countries in the world, such as Japan, Switzerland and South Korea, do not have natural resources, but they have the necessary knowledge. to import Nigeria's natural resources to manufacture sophisticated products.

He explained that countries have built a knowledge economy, defined "as one in which intellectual property - the knowledge and information systems that drive an ever-faster pace of scientific and technological advancement - is the basis of production and services".< /p>

Mr. Moghalu also suggested restructuring as a solution to Nigeria's economic development, as the institutional arrangement in which the majority of states depend on the federal government for allocations of natural resource revenues to pay workers' salaries and provide basic services has had profoundly negative implications for Nigeria's economy.

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