Tackling obstacles to Nigeria’s development

Government is a continuum. This concept of a continuum especially holds true when it concerns the issue of sustaining national employment. Thus, the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led government ought not to jettison the job-creation policies that the  immediate past Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)-led government nurtured, or stifle attempts by contemporary PDP administrations at the state level to continue to encourage job-creation initiatives. This is why it is worrisome to read about the complaint of the government of Cross River State that the Federal Government  was frustrating its initiative of building a 250-kolometre super-highway that is intended as an economic getaway from the South-South region to the tip of the Middle Belt region.

Is the Federal Government unaware of the domino effects of engaging labourers and engineers for the initial phase of construction through to the point where this proposed highway becomes a veritable economic artery? Even an APC administration (that of Lagos State) has also complained about the stifling bottleneck of the Federal Ministry of Works regarding Governor Akinwumi Ambode’s desire to reconstruct and expand the Agege-Airport Road.

The government of Akwa Ibom State has also deplored the stifling bottleneck of the Federal Ministry of Commerce regarding the lack of operational licence to commence joint local production of low-cost cars with an Israeli company, even when the Israelis have moved initial men and materiel to the shores of Nigeria. Surely, the Federal Government would not let anything get in the way of Nigeria’s economic development.

In another development, the Peace Corps led by Dickson Akor has been disbanded, thereby cutting off the economic livelihood of thousands of young ones and inadvertently pushing the Idomas to the agitation sphere of Biafra.

Again, the Office of National Security Agency (NSA) did not appreciate a job-creation opportunity in its rush to issue a memo banning helicopter shuttle from Kaduna to Abuja.

Any helicopter shuttle business is not just about the “Western or Westernised” pilots and beautiful hostesses, it is also about the overall aircraft-support staff that would temporarily relocate to Kaduna and the economic benefits that will percolate down to the local chauffeurs and cabbies and maiguards who would be engaged by these aircraft-support staff in Kaduna.

Sunday Jonah

Federal University of Technology, Minna.