Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has stated that there is need to challenge the country’s leadership to create wealth in every layer of government and make it work, adding that Nigeria currently lacks the leadership with the required capacity and vision to manage her wealth.
The presidential aspirant on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), stated this while delivering a keynote speech at London’s Royal Institute of International Affairs otherwise known as Chatham House on the theme, ‘The Importance of Strengthening State Economic Management Systems’.
Atiku while speaking on how to unlock the immeasurable potentials of Nigeria to the benefits of its people to deliver jobs, prosperity and security to all component units, insisted that Nigerian states are not poor added that every part of the country has enough wealth to sustain it.
“It is time for serious minded people to get involved and take the lead in making our country work. It is time for citizens to demand as a matter of right, from people aspiring to lead them, a plan on not just how to manage their wealth but most fundamentally how the wealth is going to be created. Slogans cannot take the place of plans and propaganda is a poor substitute for proper agenda.
“For long, our leadership has been pampered. We work into managing a wealth we have little input into how it is created. And because we are not involved in the creation, we rarely appreciate it. Hence, we turn out as either bad managers or killers of the greater Nigerian dream.
“Anybody who cannot tell Nigerians at the state level how, he/she is going to generate the required resources to run the state he/she is aspiring to govern is not worthy of the electorate votes.
“Nigeria needs a leadership that can create wealth for the country and make it work. Every part of Nigeria has enough wealth to sustain it. What is lacking is the leadership with the required capacity and vision to tap and manage the wealth on behalf of all,” he said.
