Govt must dismantle criminality to build up skills, Obi says
Don blames insecurity on poor economy
PRESIDENTIAL candidate of Labour Party ( LP), Peter Obi, has said the country must end criminality to build up skills and entrepreneurship.
He said this, yesterday, in Lagos, at the 21st yearly lecture and international leadership symposium by the Centre for Values and Leadership ( CVL), founded by Prof. Pat Utomi.
Noting that corruption and criminality kill hard work, he said there must be a deliberate fiscal policy by the government to grow talents, skills and entrepreneurship. According to him, any country where people in government are richer than businessmen or manufacturers will not survive.
“Nigeria, I believe, is a great country but first, we must dismantle the criminality in government and then we can reverse it. Corruption kills entrepreneurship, professionalism and nobody thinks well in a corrupt country,” he said.
CVL founder, Utomi, said Nigeria must stimulate entrepreneurship for global enterprise.
“How do we look at our endowment and take specific endowment that we want to become global leaders in those value chains and use limited industrial policy to stimulate the sector and facilitate young people to becoming producers in that sector,” he said.
Co- speaker, Dr Henrietta Onwuegbuzie, of the Lagos Business School, who spoke o n ‘ S k i l l s - D r i v e n Entrepreneurship’, said Nigeria must adopt a new set of education, where one chooses, according to what he or she wants to study. M
EANWHILE, a senior lecturer in the Department of Criminology and Security Studies, University of Ilorin ( UNILORIN), Dr Monsurat Isiaka, has attributed the ravaging insecurity across the country to the prevailing poor economic situation. Consequently, she appealed to the Federal Government to address and arrest the nation’s dwindling economy, noting that “as long as the nation’s economy is in comatose, crimes and criminality would continue to be the order of the day.”
Isiaka, a specialist in the Criminal Justice System and Terrorism, stated this in a chat in her office.
She argued that the need to make ends meet by jobless Nigerians or whose means of livelihood are being threatened by unbridled economic degradation led to increasing criminality across the country.