by crossriverwatch admin
The growth in Nigeria’s economy without commensurate creation of employment has been described as a miracle.
Cross River State Governor, Senator Liyel Imoke stated this in Calabar during the recent retreat held at Tinapa resort for Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs.
Imoke who’s was speaking about economic growth, indices and revenue generation said, “In Nigeria the economy is growing by 7%; that is 3 times that of United States without creating employment, this is a miracle and we don’t want this kind of economic growth in Cross River”
“We don’t want economic growth without reduction in unemployment rate, that is why we take our time to plan and subject everything we are doing to due diligence”
The governor said in Nigeria, people don’t value minds and human resources which he described as a great asset, rather it is infrastructure that citizens want a serving governor or president to do for them.
“Even as we provide infrastructure to our people, we will take our time to plan and create an alternative source of revenue for our children children and great grand children”
While charging the heads of ministries, departments and agencies to look inward and generate revenue to the coffers of the government, Imoke added that: “We cannot give you revenue when your MDAs cannot generate revenue”
Continuing he said “We also want to move our economy forward from oil or federation account economy. For those of you who have been to other economies in the world including some African economies that do not produce oil, I don’t think there is any economy where the federal, state and local governments are represented who come together to share federal allocation. There is nothing like federation account meeting there.
“A situation where federal, state and local governments go to Abuja every month to share oil money does not augur well for our economy, think about it, London, Washington DC, even in South Africa there is no such thing except in Nigeria.
“The consequence of this is that we go there and share and because of that, we lack total understanding of what it takes to run government and for the people to pay for their services.
“It is only in Nigeria that we share the national cake that we did not bake, the cake is baked by oyinbo man because he explored it from the ground. We are such an unproductive society that what we define as resource control is that there is oil in our land.
“Resource control and revenue sharing syndrome has made the Nigerian economy not to develop and when they say it grows, its growth is without creating employment”
While enjoining all the MDAs to get prepared for an emerging economy in Cross River and not to depend on federal allocation from oil, Imoke said “The oil In Nigeria will dry in the next twenty years. I hope I will still be around but if not, for those who will be around, please go and write it down and remember today that oil in twenty years time will be like coal, because there will be gas, there will be renewable energy and other new discoveries.
“So we don’t want that to be the faith of Cross River, the fate of Cross Riverians must be different and that is why we are planning despite the challenges of revenue cut and court judgements, we manage to be at the top because we plan and try to meet up with the investments drive of the state.
“We are planning towards an emerging economy in Cross River State to pave way for the incoming administration to consolidate” he concluded.
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