Nigeria? Forget it, Nigeria can ever develop - Gov. Aregbesola

The Governor of Osun State, Rauf Aregbesola, has has given reasons Nigeria is doomed and cannot develop now.

Aregbesola said the country was far from development because its economy was built on a very weak production arrangement.

According to the governor, this had made Nigerians to become lazy, especially after the nation’s independence.

He explained further that Nigerians now lived on rents from oil, which was discovered in commercial quantity shortly before it became an independent state.

His position was part of a statement made available to reporters in Osogbo on Tuesday by his media adviser, Sola Fasure.

According to Fasure, Aregbesola said this while featuring on a live television programme in the state.

He said, “Our nation today is built on a very weak production arrangement. We all live on rent from oil, especially post-independence Nigeria that is run on commission from oil, whereas our nation from the colonial period before the military interregnum was run on the productivity of our people.

“Until we are back to production and productivity, we will just be emotional, sentimental and rhetorical in our analysis on how to escape the worrisome situation we are in now.

“Though oil revenue will help to jump – start the process, but it can’t be the financial basis for our economic development.

“A nation that cannot produce what it consumes is doomed. Therefore, we must see productivity as panacea for our socio-economic challenges.

“Exploitation defines our economic relationship in Nigeria. For instance, the Boko Haram phenomenon . The Boko Haram insurgency is absolutely economic.

“It is inherited by a section of our people who are in the most vibrant stage of their lives and are resisting and rebelling against an economic situation that has put them in a miserable state that they don’t even know how to escape from.”