Why Nigeria may not realise its potential – S-East, S-South professionals

ENUGU— Southeast, South-South Professionals of Nigeria, SESSPN, has said Nigeria cannot achieve her true potentials as a nation under the present administrative,
economic and socio-political structure.
President of SESSPN, Mr. Emeka Ugwuoju, while addressing guests at the fund raising dinner in support of the South-East, South-South Development Forum in Enugu, argued that except Nigeria must be restructured to become a wealth generating country rather than its present.
According to him, “structure where wealth is shared among the highly privileged”, the nation could hardly make any positive economic growth or advancement. Nigeria cannot work effectively within its present structure because we think that we are a rich nation while we are not. We are only operating a structure that encourages the sharing of wealth instead of wealth creation.”
He recalled that in the 1960s, Nigeria was much better than South Korea but today the story was different because Africa’s most populous nation was now lagging behind some of the countries that used to trail behind it. “South Korea is better now because they are doing the right things that enabled their economy to develop,” he said.
He appealed to the people of southeast and south-south to unite for the economic   growth and benefits of the zones.
“The idea is to capture certain projects that will develop the zones or the eleven states that make up the two zones of South East and South South. The development forum is that the eleven states in the zones should come together and engage in development ventures for the zones,” Ugwuoju said.
“We want to see that the two zones see themselves as partners in progress. We want southeast to see things affecting south-south  as  equally affecting  her (southeast) and also south-south  zone to see things affecting south-east as equally affecting it (south-south zone),” he said.
Also speaking, an economist, Dr. Ifedioramma Obi said there must be an economic interdependence by either southeast or south-south for “us to develop as one region.” Obi said: “What we have been doing since 2003 when the association was formed is to have the two regions, southeast and south-south zones as one “nation.”

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