By Chidiebere Iwuoha
Owerri
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has said lack of resources was not responsible for the country’s relative under-development, and blamed the lack of vision by leaders for the sorry state of governance.
He stated this yesterday while speaking as the Chairman at the All Progressives Congress (APC) Governors Progressive Governance Lecture Series in Owerri, the Imo state capital.
Atiku said the country had the resources, but needed “leadership, vision and determination to make things work.”
In his speech, which dwelt on health, he said the outbreak of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in Nigeria has brought to the fore Nigeria’s emergency management response strategies.
He said the arrival of the fatal disease calls for urgent need for adequate investments in healthcare, infrastructure and service delivery across the country.
Addressing the inconsistency between Nigeria’s resources and its performance, Atiku said the statistics are disturbing and that the outbreak of Ebola had only exposed the underbelly of our healthcare system.
Despite Nigeria’s vast resources and human capital, he said the doctor-to-patient ratio in Nigeria is 1 to 6,400 which is far below the WHO standard of 1 to 600.
He also lamented that at 50 per cent access to improved water source and 35 per cent adequate sanitation for Nigerians, the country is among the lowest in the world.
He said health was not a privilege, but a right which “every citizen in a modern society is entitled to.”
He explained that security and healthcare were critical areas posing urgent and grave challenges to the country.
Atiku praised Governor Rochas Okorocha for what he had put in place, unlike what he witnessed during the regime of his predecessor, noting that since the last one year he visited, the state had been transformed by Okorocha.
He said the lecture was timely, especially now that the Ebola Virus Disease was ravaging, noting that before this time diseases like malaria, pneumonia, diarrhea had caused about 50 per cent of death in the country.
In his speech, the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief John Oyegun, said the APC was a creditable alternative among Nigerians and that even the leadership of PDP knew it.
He assured that by 2015 the party would drive away corruption and entrench good governance in the system, far from what was being done by the ruling PDP.
Governor of Oyo state, Chief Abiola Ajumobi, who spoke on behalf of the Progressive Governors Forum, said APC governors were concerned about achievements instead of propaganda of PDP, the party which he referred to as the major illness after Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) and assured that Nigerians would get the best after APC takeover in 2015.
The host governor, Owelle Rochas Okorocha, had in his welcome address earlier, said the focus of the lecture series was to address pressing economic and social issues confronting the nation, having dealt with subjects around unemployment and education system in the first and second lecture series in Oyo as in Kano state.
