A former Minister of Petroleum and frontline elder statesman, Professor Tam David-West has said that from the look of things, Nigeria may find it hard to succeed.
The former minister said this while delivering the 13th annual distinguished guest lecture entitled: “The Social Pyramid and Good Governance” organised by a group known as The Forum in the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, on Tuesday.
According to him, “Like Jeremy Bentham says, the happiness of the people in a society is the end of governance. But what do we have in Nigeria. The gap between the rich and the poor keeps expanding.
“If this gap is not narrowed, a time will soon come when the suffering masses will see no difference between living and dying and will take up arms against the state. And when this happens, Abuja cannot stand.
“I have argued with documented evidence that there is nothing like fuel subsidy and so they can’t remove what does not exist. Petrol should sell for N40 in Nigeria. Although officially it is N97, marketers sell petrol for between N110 and N120 and government closes its eyes to this illegality.
“The Ribadu panel has shown how the country lost billions of naira to swindlers under non-existing subsidy. A senator earns N500,000 in a day and N15.18 million in a month, which can employ President Barrack Obama four times,” David-West said.
“From the way the country is being run, Nigeria has no right to succeed. We are called the giant in Africa and we are truly giant in many negative things. This country can’t survive because it is anti-poor and consequently anti-God. There is also an elastic limit to people’s suffering,” he said.
The frontline ijaw leaders observed that the only way the political class could avoid a revolution in the country was to provide good governance through policies that would reduce the gap between the haves and the have-nots.
He voiced his opposition to the clamour for a Sovereign National Conference (SNC) on the grounds that the resolution reached at such conference about the structure of governance of the country might not be in the interest of the masses.
Notable Nigerians at the lecture included Professor O.O Akinkugbe; Dr Kayode Obembe; the Provost, College of Medicine of the University of Ibadan, Professor O.O Akinyinka; and a representative of the university’s vice-chancellor.
