A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress in Oyo State and prominent lawyer, Chief Niyi Akintola (SAN), has blamed some of the problems confronting Nigeria on lack of creative thinkers.
Akintola said this in an interview with journalists on the sidelines of a public lecture organised by the State Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists .
He said apart from leaders like the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo and few other ones, many people, who found themselves in leadership positions were bereft of ideas that could take the country out of the quagmire of backwardness it found itself.
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Akintola said the lack of thinking leaders was the reason the country still depended on imported fuels despite being an oil producing country.
He said, ” We lost a great thinker in (Chief Obafemi) Awolowo. He knew that after primary school, there would be need for modern schools. He created that. After that he knew the schools of agriculture would be needed to promote agriculture.
“But now, people are no longer thinking. Who is thinking now? If we had thinkers, they would have known that there would be an explosion in number of vehicles and would have built more functional refineries. Lagos alone has about 70 per cent of the vehicles in this country but with no refinery, that is lack of thinking on the part of our policy makers.
“The AtLas Cove is located in Lagos and may God forbid, if anything happens to it that is the place that houses all our Premium Motor Sprit. No security is manning the Third Mainland Bridge, our commercial capital is not manned, when you go to Dubai, you see aircraft in the air every now and then. But we don’t have serious thinkers again.”
The guest speaker at the lecture, Adegboyega Adegoke, who is an accountant also said the nation’s refineries ought to have been sold to private investors long ago. He said the huge funds being expended on turnaround maintenance every year would have been available to be used for other projects.
Adegoke said while businesses and governments in other climes were thinking of how to reduce losses, Nigeria was not doing the same thing.
He said emergence of good leaders and followers who would hold the leaders accountable would put Nigeria back on the path to greatness.
The Nigerian system will always frustrate leaders with philosophical bent. Only those who are altruistic among the present leaders will want to pay the price for creative thinking. Don’t forget, the likes of Chief Obafemi Awolowo had credible source of livelihood. They were not in government to feather their nest, all they were after was the progress of the nation. It’s so unfortunate we have not been able to raise individuals of likemind and as a result lags behind in developmental stride.