A professor of Political Science, Samuel Egwu, has stressed the need for Nigeria to address the problem of poverty, saying that reinforcing democracy is critical to achieving that objective.
He said this while delivering the keynote lecture at a Democracy Day lecture at the State House in Abuja on Thursday as part of events to celebrate the 2025 Democracy Day.
Egwu, who is a Resident Electoral Officer of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), said a nation as endowed as Nigeria should not be the poverty capital of the world.
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“How come that a country so endowed with resources, with human capacity, and with good people will today have the largest deposit of poorest people, it is something we need to think through. This country has been declared the poverty capital of the world, and this is something that is not good for us.
“And we have less population than China and India and then look at the percentage of people that are in extreme poverty, look at the fragile state index and all other key indicators for development, we are not doing well. And that is why we need to reinforce our democracy so that we can address these challenges,” he said.
The guest lecturer asserted that the problem of poverty in the country was a cumulative consequence of the failure of post-colonial Nigeria which everyone should feel guilty of for not doing what was needed to stop it.
Going forward, the professor said that what Nigeria needed was a paradigm shift in terms of governance, democratic governance, and statecraft.
Speaking further, Egwu expressed the need for the President to put his weight behind the autonomy of the state assemblies in the ongoing constitutional reform agenda.
According to him, that will change the narrative of governance at the subnational level.
Source: Channels TV
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