For Increase in Social Spending

Opeyemi Ojo

I write in response to Kayode Komolafe’s column in the THISDAY edition of April 26, 2017.

For some time now, I have held the opinion that our social crusaders have not helped matters in our national development. I have also viewed it as a crisis of knowledge. May be they do not know. We have witnessed a lot of organized criticism where there is money. Attacks are mostly aimed at what government is doing wrong, with little suggestion of what government should be doing right. There is hardly a pool of voices showing the way forward- what should be done. Most of the time we have the loudest of voices are thriving on criticism. Just a few folks are showing the way forward in patriotism, a few showing the path of service delivery, nobody is showing the burden of a sound value system. We usually have people’s position skewed towards one interest or the other.

So it was refreshing for me to read Komolafe’s article re- echoing UNDP’s Selim Jahan that “every human being counts and every human life is equally valuable”. I feel strongly that this is the basis in which a government can be said to be serving the people- a government should be a representative of the Supreme God.

For me we are here today, not because of President Goodluck Jonathan or President Ibrahim Babangida; but because we as a people have not learnt to take a “propeople path to development”.

Now I would like to make an appeal that there should be a greater focus on “how to increase social spending”. Maybe the honest liberal among us will be encouraged to get to the next level of radical probing of our problems and we will begin to see solutions flowing.