The Governor of Kaduna, Nasir El-Rufai, Saturday in Ibadan said the discovery of oil in Nigeria is responsible for the brain drain in the country.

Governor El-Rufai, who spoke at the 2017 Founder’s Day Celebration in memory of Prof Ojetunji Aboyade, which was organised by the Development Policy Centre, said because Nigeria got ‘easy money’ from oil, the nation lost its thinking initiative on how to develop other sources of revenue and diversify the economy.

Key excerpts:

• “Having suffered brain drain, how do we attract back our Diaspora and the brain-gain associated with it like the Chinese and Indians have witnessed?”
• “The earlier the oil dries up the better for our national ability to think, be innovative and respect intellect and academic achievement.
• “We get easy money, we do not collect taxes and our taxes are six per cent of Gross Domestic Product…We stopped respecting the intellectuals that we have in our universities because we got easy money.”
• El-Rufai said Nigeria lacked sustainable national planning policy capable of helping its development.
• “It is obvious that Nigeria is severely under-policed, and will require more personnel, intelligence assets, better training, technology and equipment for its security agencies for the country to be a credible guarantor of security.”
• “Even if these were to be available, it is also debatable whether a single centralised policing system, structure and staffing for 200 million citizens is viable in a diverse, multi-lingual, multi-cultural and multi-ethnic nation like Nigeria.”
• “How can we promote a national subscription to meritocracy? How can we ensure that the imperative of reflecting federal character does not become the enemy of merit and quality of appointments?”

Omoleye Omoruyi

Omoleye Omoruyi… an apprentice web/game developer, novelist, sensitive to happenings in the world. Meet him @Lord_rickie on Twitter/Instagram