As Nigeria celebrates her 61st independence day,
Edo State Deputy Governor, Comrade Philip Shaibu has called for a national rebirth as the way forward to placing the country on the path of greatness..
In his independence message, Shaibu emphasized, resetting what he described as the ‘faulty foundation’ to return the nation to its default position where every region would compete in terms of their natural endowment and not in terms of crisis and insecurity.
In his words:”We must reset and rebuild a nation where we see each other as our brothers keepers; a nation where politics is no more played as a zero-sum-game where the winners takes it all and the losers are left to be plotting the fall of the government.
“No nation can succeed in such an atmosphere of pull down syndrome. We must arise beyond partisan politics as Nigerians. The spirit of patriotism must be relaunch in our spirit, soul and body as we reset the nation.
“What Nigerians celebrate as independence is not the Independence that our founding fathers fought and died for. We have since lost its true meaning.
“We have destroy the nation we seek to build through partisan politics. Patriotism must come before partisanship, this is the way we should practice our politics in this country.
“Nigerians are arching for a politics that moved beyond bickering into an era of politics that seek public interest through appropriate implementation of robust national development plans for the general good.
“We can’t afford to wait any longer before addressing this urgent cry and needs of Nigerians,” he stated.
He attributed lack of continuity and implementation of policies for the failure of the country to attain the desire growth.
According to him, “The bad shape of the country today has nothing to do with lack of planning or ideas, but has everything to do with lack of implementation of national development plans by successive governments.
“Nigeria have the highest abandoned National development plans in the World, yet, we are still craving in creating new plans like the National Economy Recovery and Growth Plans that couldn’t achieve expected outcome and was jettison.”
While expressing regret over none continuity of these development plans and the lesson to be learned from them, he said “The first National development plans between 1962 to 1968 was abandon.
“The second one between 1970 to1974 that established Nigeria firmly as a great and dynamic economy was also abandoned .The third National Development Plan between 1975 to 1980 that places high priority on the development of base industries across the nation, infrastructure social services was again jettisoned.
“The 1981 to 1985 NDP was also shortlived, then came that of SAP of between 1986 to 1993 that was also abandoned halfway.
“We move into Abacha era of vision 2010 and stumble into vision 2020 yet none of these visions and national development plans have been able to develop the nation.
“It’s a time to reflect deeply and return this nation to its default position by reviewing our plans.
“Nigeria has a structural problem of decades of indiscipline in abiding to plans. No new dimension or new national development plans will make any difference.
“We must reestablish the discipline to follow up a development plans to an appreciable extent rather than creation of new plans yearly or quarterly.
“It’s this same culture of abandoning national development plans that has been extended to other sector of the economy where we see abandon and unfinished infrastructural projects across the nation due to indiscipline. We must reorder our priorities and build public faith in our democracy.
“As we celebrate our anniversary, Nigerians are looking forward to a government that is not beholden to any group, individuals or religion.
“This is the only way Nigeria as a nation can achieve moral consensus that our dear nation, Nigeria, shall forever remain an indivisible state” the deputy governor concluded.