PDP rule witnessed massive plundering of nation’s wealth – APC Chieftain

8 years ago

PDP rule witnessed massive plundering of nation’s wealth – APC Chieftain

A chieftain of the All Progressive Congress, Hon Michael Opeyemi Bamidele, popularly called MOB, was also a member of the 7th House of Representatives and a former governorship candidate of the Labour Party, LP, in the June 21, 2014 governorship election in Ekiti State.

He spoke with Vanguard, shortly after addressing the 10th annual National Conference of the School of Business Studies, held recently at the Federal Polytechnic, Ado-Ekiti. In this interview, Bamidele spoke extensively on the decaying state of education and the way forward. Excerpts:

How will you describe the mood of the nation today?

Nigerian people are still relatively basking in the euphoria of a new era of progress and hope restoration, given their almost endless woes and frustration at the hands of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the last sixteen years of misrule and travesty of governance.

Today, Nigerians are beginning to heave a sigh of relief that those laudable dreams for which they sacrificed their lots to attain democratic rule in 1999, might perhaps, come to reality now that the APC which promised to change the tide in all facets of our national life has assumed power at the centre and has spared no time in demonstrating its determination to drastically improve the living conditions of the people and ensure that our dear nation regains her rightful place in the global comity of nations.

I am proud to have joined hands with other progressive elements across the country to mount a vigorous campaign against the gale of misrule that conditioned the successive PDP administrations in Nigeria. Today, I am glad to have associated with the account of victory that characterized the last Presidential election which eventually ushered in the new administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR.

Assess the 16 years of PDP rule
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The last 16 years witnessed a massive plundering of our collective wealth, it was an era of impunity, the de-legitimization of the political process through recurrent day light rigging and manipulation of the people’s mandate, the misplacement of governance priorities and acute dearth of well- articulated programmatic policies that could have been able to tackle the endemic corruption, abject poverty and acute insecurity that bedevilled the nation following several years of state militarism and bad leadership.

Since his assumption in office, President Muhammadu Buhari has not minced words in acknowledging that the electoral mandate given to him by Nigerians were hinged on his promise to address corruption, insecurity and to revive the economy.

The laudable bold steps taken so far by the Buhari administration, part of which is the recent appointment of seasoned administrators and technocrats, the so called ‘Buhari’s Change Agents’to man the various Federal Ministries and pilot the change delivery process for the next four years, the renewed bold steps at fighting corruption and other misdemeanours in public and private places, the on-going holistic reinvigoration of our refineries aimed at revamping our ailing downstream oil and gas sector as well as the new determination to diversify the economy away from oil with a major focus on massive investments in agriculture, power generation and transmission, mining, social infrastructure and industrialization are eloquent testimonies to the preparedness of the APC led administration to make real its electoral promises and bring succour to the apparently hopeless and precarious situation Nigerian people have found themselves in the past decades.

View on the pervasive corruption in Nigeria’s education sector

The education sector, among all other facets of the society, stands out as one area of priority for every well-meaning Government that is driven by a motivation to rebuild and transform the nation, especially a nation that is already on the precipice of collapse. Given its multiplier impact, strength and capacity to create a domino effect on the other sectors, the education sector of any given country is the bedrock of its national life.

Invariably, it is the essential foundation or fulcrum upon which other aspects of national development are built. In other words, education drives invention, patriotism, loyalty, competence and excellence to the extent that the seeming success or failure of a nation is profoundly predicated on the quality of its education sector in content and character.

Given the contributions of various stakeholders in the nation’s education sector and the significant policy incoherence that has brought about a huge decline in the standard of education in Nigeria, education, rather being used as an instrument for effective national development has become a tool for destruction.

On problems confronting tertiary education in the country

It is regrettable that the hydra-headed and multifaceted problems that our tertiary institutions have had to contend with have constituted a major impediment to the realization of the avowed goals of tertiary education in Nigeria. Parts of these problems are: Gross under-funding and poor disbursement pattern; irregularities in access to education and varying policy somersaults on the standards of admission and training;

Poor institutional management occasioned by the placement of square pegs in round holes; inadequate practical exposure for science related and engineering graduates thereby creating huge professional gaps between knowledge and practice; inadequate academic personnel, a resultant effect of the brain drain syndrome in which teaching and non-teaching staff are lost to local private companies, private and foreign tertiary institutions and international agencies; dearth of institutional autonomy and academic freedom for unhindered cross fertilization of development-driven ideas.

Solution to the leadership deficiency in the country today?

A most fundamental solution to the perennial problems of leadership deficit and moral decadence in this country is a philosophical value re-orientation for the young people which stems from a genuine national ideology that seeks to promote the ideals of patriotism, forthrightness, diligence, honesty and commitment to national ideals, which is anchored on the belief that national development and positive national image is a sum total of the personal attribute and behaviours of each individual citizen of this country.

Effective leadership and moral regeneration must take root from the education sector where leadership and civic education becomes a major course at all levels in the academic curricular of all elementary, secondary and tertiary institutions in the country. It is also mandatory for Managements of higher citadels of learning to encourage a free flow of

ideas and interactions among students to enable them develop their innate leadership skills and positive social attributes. For this reason, independent students’ unionism must be allowed to thrive on our campuses and should be seen as a lasting panacea to the surging growth of the virulent canker worm of violent campus cultism in our tertiary institutions.

When undergraduates, as full blown adults, are discouraged from associating legitimately with one another, they tend to find other (nocturnal and unconventional) means of engagement.