By Jamiu Ganiyu
The immediate past Governor of Osun State, Ogbeni Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola has described Nigeria as a poor country among its contemporaries in the world considering its high population rate and land mass against the citizens per capita income, which has made most Nigerians to be extremely poor.
The former Governor of Osun made this known yesterday in Osogbo, Osun State capital at the colloquium titled “Continuity as a panacea for Sustainable Development” organized by his friends to celebrate his 62nd birthday.
Aregbesola said Nigerians do not know that Nigeria is a poor country. In his words “we don’t know we are poor and that is why we go ostentatiously, flamboyantly and we want to be seen as the best creation of God”
“Cuba is a very tiny Island in the Caribbean, it is about 40k away from America, the size of Cuba in terms of the landmass is the size at its best of Kwara and Niger States combined. The population of Cuba is 12 million but those are not the constraints of Cuba, Cuba is blockaded by the whole world, Cuba suffers an international economic embargo since the 1960s, it cannot freely trade with the world, Cuba is blockaded by America, it cannot trade with her labour that is prosperous and big, yet Cuba in 2017 had a total revenue of $52 billion for 12 million people, occupy a landmass of Niger and Kwara combined”.
“In Nigeria that year, our so-called “rich Nigeria”, had total revenue of $13 billion, and our population in that year was about 180 million people, we don’t want to walk, we realized that we poor and we are not working”
“We are all strategising, grandstanding and scheming to take out of the meager $13 billion revenue, where are we going to end, such situation result to anarchy and chaos”
“The per capita income from oil at its best, I mean if we produce to the quota given to us by OPEC, two million barrel per day and if we sell each barrel of crude oil at $100 dollars per barrel and we share it equally amongst us, the share of each Nigerian is $1 dollar, global exchange rate at best rate is N400, who can depend here on a N400 allocation per day? Should we decide to work, we can turn the N400 to N1,200, N2000, N4000 and once we do that, we will not only be as rich as individuals, our nation will be rich, so, productive engagement is a duty that all of us must engage ourselves in” he concluded.
The celebrant, however, called on every Nigerians to use any method possible to reduce the growing rate of the country’s population.
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