Former Special Adviser to President Olusegun Obasanjo on Policies and Project Implementation, Professor Julius Ihonvbere, on Friday blamed the high rate of poverty in the country on the past leaders of the nation.
According to him, such leaders are criminals that should not be allowed to go unpunished. Delivering a lecture to mark the 60th birthday of the Ondo State governor, Dr. Olusegun Agagu, the former adviser said those that had governed the country before now had made things worse and precipitated pain, hunger, disease, poverty, unemployment and insecurity.
Ihonvbere said, “leadership has failed us very badly and that is exactly why poverty is still widespread in our dear country today. “Whether it is economic poverty, moral poverty, intellectual poverty, spiritual poverty, ideological poverty or social poverty, our people are grinding in it. With all our sacrifices, hard work resources and tolerance just look at what they have managed not to do in the last 40 years.
“If anything, past leaders did the exact opposite or focused on half hearted, opportunistic and cosmetic attacks on poverty. Nigerians have been taken for a ride for too long. How do we explain the pains, hunger, diseases, poverty, unemployment filth, joblessness and insecurity?.
“How do we explain the emergence of brutal and criminal dictatorship that once paraded themselves as government? How can we explain or begin to understand a thorough inefficient, corrupt and wasteful bureaucracy that has failed to uplift the condition of living of the people in any serious way.
He added that the non performance of the leaders and rulers had compromised the integrity, sacrifice and achievements of those that actually worked and indeed working well.
“The records of disappointments have precipitated a culture of self doubt, cynicism, mockery and denigration. Every public official and businessman is seen as crook. Religious leaders including traditional rulers are seen as unreliable”, he added.