According to Mr. Laolu Akande,
Senior Special Assistant to the President (Media & Publicity), Osinbajo was
responding to questions during a town-hall meeting where he said that those who
have made away with the nation’s resources should be made to account for them.
According to him “the greatest
problem Nigeria has is one of grand corruption; that is the biggest problem we
have, not the problem of planning or plans; and grand corruption is the reason
why we are not moving as fast as we should in our country.”
He said that, “there is no country in the world that can survive if its resources are stolen the way Nigeria’s resources are stolen”.
The Vice President noted that
most of the issues raised by the Nigerians in Diaspora at the meeting around
lack of energy, infrastructure, quality and extensive health care services,
education and security can be traced back to the management of resources, while
calling on Nigerian citizens to hold leaders accountable for the nation’s
wealth.
The Vice President spoke and took
over 30 questions at the town hall meeting in Berlin, described by many of the
attendees as the first of its kind since 1999, when civil rule was restored in
Nigeria.
Prof. Osinbajo stated that one of
the key issues the Buhari’s administration was dealing with in partnership with
European leaders now was the repatriation of the country’s stolen assets
stashed abroad.
He added that the Federal
Government was equally having conversations with European countries on the
subject of migration of Nigerians to Europe.
He told the gathering that
government was concerned about whole migration issue and has started
negotiating with European countries.
He added that European countries
can partner with Nigeria by investing in the country thereby discouraging the
kind of migration of young people that is now prevalent. He was optimistic the
challenge can be effectively addressed through Nigeria’s collaboration with its
European partners.
Explaining Federal Government’s
efforts at addressing unemployment challenges, the Vice President observed that
a young population of about 60 per cent creates a yearly addition of about 1.4
million graduates to the unemployment market.
He, however, revealed that the
Buhari administration is addressing the matter from several fronts such as the
Federal Government employment of 500,000 graduates under the N-Power scheme, as
well as through other social investment programmes like MarketMoni and
TraderMoni.
Still on government efforts, he
noted that, “one of the areas we are hoping to get employment is through
agriculture.
What we have done with
agriculture is we have given 760,000 farmers direct loans under the Anchor
Borrowers scheme”; generating more interests among farmers especially in the
North, which is where a lot of farming is going on.
Responding to the issue about the
wild insinuation that made the rounds to the effect that the President died
last year, Vice President Osinbajo told the audience, which included cross
sections of Nigerians in Germany, Ambassadors of Nigeria to Germany, France,
Italy, Switzerland and Belgium, that it was ridiculous for anyone to suggest
that the President was dead.
He said it did not make sense to
say the President died abroad and that no one knew. Continuing, he said: “Is it
possible that anyone will die here in Germany and no one will know he died and
somehow he will be flown out quietly out of a country like England?
I think it is just so absurd. I think it is
not something we should take half seriously. I think we should be properly
informed.”
On health care delivery services
to majority of Nigerians, Prof Osinbajo agreed on the need to extend good
health care to all Nigerians, but he pointed out this can only be achieved
through compulsory health insurance policy.
Underscoring the urgent need to
develop a functional educational system, the Vice President announced that the
Buhari administration was developing a robust education policy, saying
“education is the basis of all we’re doing.”
In the next number of years by
2050, “we are going to be third most populous country in the entire world. So
if we don’t get education right we are in deep trouble, it means if we don’t
get our education policy right, we are going to have millions of young people
out there doing nothing; nothing can be more dangerous than that.
“But if you look at our education
policy and what we are trying to do a lot of it is technology based.
We are working on our curriculum
with some technology institutions and companies like MIT, Oracle, Cisco, and
quite a few, just to develop the curriculum.
The educational policy is what we
call STEAM; we have added Arts to STEM and we are looking at how to deliver
that policy in the cheapest and quickest possible way using technology.
“Part of our plans is to
reconstruct 10,000 classrooms annually; it is not just to fix the structure, it
also involves technology; to put technology into those classrooms to make sure
we have the model right and we have so many countries that are interested in partnering
with us”.
“Technology in my view is really
the way to go; to expand our capacity to train teachers and to train them
quickly and this is contained in our Next Level document”, he stressed.
On the ongoing strike by members
of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), the Vice President said
negotiation between the Federal Government and ASUU was continuing and he
expressed hope that an agreement can be reached with soon.
The Vice President is today
headlining the Nigerian-German Business Dialogue in Berlin.
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