By Munachimso Obienyi
For a sustainable economic prosperity, there is need for Nigeria to have the presence of wealth and enterprise.
The Presidential Candidate, Labour Party, Peter Obi, stated this during the 52nd ICAN Conference themed; Nigeria: Adopting Sustainability for Economic Prosperity which was followed by NwafoLive on Wednesday.
Speaking on the theme, Obi stated that the theme was quite apt as SDGs stems from the aftermath of millennium goals which lasted for year 2000-2015 and further extended to 2015-2030.
He noted that the Labour Party manifesto is already mainstreamed alongside the SDGs and have put it into its development agenda.
According to him, Chartered accountants play a critical role in the development of SDGs as whatever they plan or do, they have to ensure a level of financial sustainability, budgeting, forecasting and most importantly, the revenue because accountants are at the heart of tax.
“Today, apart from other factors besetting the economy, the critical problem of the country is revenue to GDP. We do not have enough revenue because even at par with our peers in Africa, we are at 6 per cent when the average in the continent is about 16 per cent. It is the accountant that is supposed to help the government organize tax revenue from Nigerians.
So it is the accountants that can help unite this country. Today, Nigeria is one of the fragile countries and so security becomes critical. We have to also fight corruption in terms of expenditure, subsidy and incompetent people in the cabinet”, the LP Presidential candidate said.
He further added that the subsidy is an organised crime while stating that it is high time Nigeria becomes a country with wealth and enterprise.
“In a country where a politician is richer than businessmen, that country is finished. Hence for a sustainable Nigeria and a sustainable economic prosperity for Nigeria, we have to start doing the right thing and this include; uniting Nigeria. Security is not difficult and with technology today, one can know where a crime is taking place.
We have three level of policing; the local, state and Federal arms of government. Secondly, we have to fight corruption. We want to translate a level of transparency and accountability. We want to be able to move the country from a consumption country to a production country. The greatest valuable asset of Nigeria is the vast uncultivated lands in the North”.
Whilst stating that the Netherlands export $20 billion worth of agricultural goods everyday at 33sqkm of land, Obi said that a state like Yobe should do one-half times that which is about $2 billion and that at the exchange rate is about N1.33trillion.
“So we want to use these two to stabilize our currency which is collapsing because we are not a producing country and not exporting much or even anything. The more you pull people out of poverty, the more crime gets reduced and this leads to a country being sustainable. The solution is to do simple things consistently”, he said.
