By Margaret John and Laura Ella
A civil rights activist, Comrade Ben Usang has blamed the poor developmental indices in Cross River on the lack of insight of leaders to project the state’s issues on the national scale as well as corruption.
Usang stated this Sunday in Calabar on a radio program monitored by CrossRiverWatch where he averred that the type of federalism practiced in the country was inimical to the development of the state.
“We should be more proactive in national issues that affect the state and issues that affect cross river state must be projected much more than this,” Usang said and stressed the need for the political leaders to be focused on one specific developmental project at each time to prevent having abandoned projects.
“We are aiming for too many things at the same time, and I think that when we continue aiming for too many things at the same time with very little resources, the tendency is that we risk that destruction we try to avoid,”Usang said.
He argued that there was something wrong with the developmental paradigm in the state and the country as templates and policies developed have either been abandoned or implemented at arate which has impacted negatively on the sociocultural and sociopolitical economy.
Also, he lamented that corruption has permeated the fabric of the society which has made it very difficult for anything to be achieved with the leadership worse off. He called for a holistic review of the systems to ensure that political leaders who emerge have the interests of the people at heart and not their personal gains.