President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday identified greed of people in government and corruption as the greatest problems hindering the development of Nigeria since independence.
Jonathan spoke yesterday in Abuja at the Presidential retreat on the first four years implementation plan of the Vision 20:2020 and public private partnership framework for infrastructure development in Nigeria.
“Greed of which corruption is a part is the main stumbling block that stems our growth. If people are greedy, they tend to inflate contracts, if people are greedy, they intend to inflate the price; all these retard our development,” he said.
Jonathan stated: “For example, somebody in the private sector who is contractor to government who is to provide services or execute a contract, what is suppose to cost government N10, 000 will collaborate with the government functionaries to increase it to N30, 000 and if you are cautioned you will say you are a businessman you are not corrupt. “What we are supposed to do in one year we are doing it in three years, what infrastructure that might produce 30 kilometres of road might not even be up to 10 kilometres. What we are supposed to be in three years time you have by your action taken us back two years and yet you say you are not corrupt.
“That is why I’ll prefer to use the word greed because it is one of the stumbling blocks to the growth of our nation.”
Jonathan further reiterated his administration’s determination to overhaul the procurement process of government to ensure that projects were implemented at appropriate costs.
He said the last Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting, set up a committee to look into our procurement because if we do not review our procurement, money that will give us three times the price of something ends up giving us only one.
President Jonathan further said that apart from awarding contracts, ministers must monitor implementation of projects to ensure that they produce value for money. “We must ensure that people whether civil servants or contractors who are chronic collaborators to exploit us as a nation no longer have a field day,” he said.
Former Head of Interim Government (NIG) and Board chairman of the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) Chief Ernest Shonekan observed that one of the paradoxes of the country was that it remained in abject poverty in spite “indisputable and widely acknowledged potential for strong and sustained growth capacity of our economy.”
National Planning Minister Shamsudeen Usman said that it would require about N32trillion investments to actualise the dream of Vision 20:2020.
He said that the fund would be sourced from the three tiers of government with the Federal government contributing N10trillion, states and local government N9trillion while the remaining N13trillion is expected to come from the private sector.
The minister revealed that the estimated federally collected revenue from the 2010 to 2013 was N16.3Trillion while the estimated investment for Federal, State and Local government for the period 2010 to 2013 was about N19trillion.
Also speaking at the occasion, Senate President David Mark said to put the country in better shape, N10trillion would have to go into the construction of one million homes annually.
Mark, who was represented by Senator Saminu Turaki, a former Jigawa State Governor, said it has been estimated that Nigeria would have a shortage of 16million homes by the year 2025.
He said investments should be directed at infrastructures must be done in collaboration with the private sector as government alone cannot do it.
“There is no doubt that for this goal to be achieved, we will need private sector; local and foreign direct investment, as government does not possess the resources to do that.