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Justina Otio
Guest
Renowned economist, Pat Utomi, has stated that the National Assembly is the worst thing that has happened to the country.
Utomi lamented that the country is a failure because the political class and the elites, particularly the legal elite lack alternative thinking to turn things around.
He argued that the National Assembly, which should be the platform for robust debates to turn around the nation’s fortunes, has been captured.
Utomi shared his grievances during an interview with Punch.
He said it was baffling that the Nigerian political class failed to recognise that the nation was presently at war, requiring a war cabinet where almost everybody pulls together to fix the nation’s problems.
He said, “Nigeria is a failure right now; democracy is not working. We all know that; anybody who does not know that is fooling himself. We have total judicial capture; we have legislative capture, so there is no alternative thinking in the country.
“For me, the worst thing that has happened to the country is the National Assembly because that is where you should have the kind of debates that will lead you to options, but you can’t because the whole place is captured.
“These guys are just hustlers trying to get what they can out of the system without asking what will make the country work.
“When you have that kind of problem, you come to the point that James Robinson was making when he says a classic example is Nigeria which knows what to do but cannot seem to do it. You need, in a time like this, a certain kind of mindset.
“A local example is Olusegun Obasanjo in 1976/1977 when the oil crisis began to slide. He decided that we would go to low-profile mode. As head of state, his car was a Peugeot 504; he cut his travels.
“Anybody who watches the way people in power spend public resources cannot take seriously any statement that this is a time of sacrifice. So, the problem begins with them. Intense political commitment is not there.”
The economist added, “You cannot save an economy when the political actors are on a binge and you will not have the kind of consequences that you have today for the economy.
“It is an intensely political process to turn around the economy. The Nigerian political class needs to recognise that we are in a moral equivalence of a war. And when a country is at war, it pulls together. Nigerian politicians still think they are on a binge.
“So, they are all running in different directions, and nobody is sitting down to forge a national consensus on how to solve this problem. When you have the moral equivalence of war, what you need is to set up a war room, and war cabinet and bring everybody together to say, how do we fix these problems.”
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