U.S Envoy Says, ‘Nigeria Does Not Need Saints But Leaders’
Mr. Princeton Lyman, Ex-United States Ambassador to Nigeria[/caption]
A former United States Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. Princeton Lyman, in a scathing remarks that seems aimed at the over-hyped anti-graft drive of the President Muhammadu Buhari regime, has advised that Nigeria does not need ‘saints’ but ‘leaders’ that can get the job done.
“I served in South Korea in the middle of the 1960s and it was time when South Korea was poor and considered hopeless, but it was becoming to turn around, later to become to every person’s amazement then the eleventh largest economy in the world. And I remember the economist in my mission saying, you know it did not bother him that the leading elites in the government of South Korea were taking 15 – 20 percent off the top of every project, as long as every project was a good one, and that was the difference. “The leadership at the time was determined to solve the fundamental economic issues of South Korea economy and turn its economy around.
“It has not happened in Nigeria today. You don’t need saints. It needs leaders who say “You know we could be becoming irrelevant, and we got to do something about it.”
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Lyman, who served in Nigeria from 1986 to 1989, was speaking on the panel titled: “The Nigerian State and U.S. Strategic Interests” at the Achebe Colloquium at Brown University, Rhodes, United States.
He warned that Nigeria’s relevance could become nothing in the next decade if nothing is done to arrest its import dependency as well as oil leverage as more African countries now have commercial quantity of crude.
“And oil, yes, Nigeria is a major oil producer, but Brazil is now launching a 10-year program that is going to make it one of the major oil producers in the world. And every other country in Africa is now beginning to produce oil.
“And Angola is rivalling Nigeria in oil production, and the United States has just discovered a huge gas reserve which is going to replace some of our dependence on imported energy.
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“So if you look ahead ten years, is Nigeria really going to be that relevant as a major oil producer, or just another of another of the many oil producers while the world moves on to alternative sources of energy and other sources of supply,” he said.
