Abuja – Dr Sunny Kuku, an industrialist, has predicted that Nigeria will regain its economic pre-eminence in the world under President Muhammadu Buhari.
Kuku, also the National President, Alumni Association, University of Lagos, said this when he addressed State House correspondents after the Association paid a courtesy visit to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on Tuesday in Abuja.
He, however, urged the citizenry to be patient with the administration since it was doing a lot to lift the economy out of the doldrums.
Kuku urged the Federal Government to do all it could to salvage the nation’s economy in the public domain for Nigerians to be aware of them.
He said that the administration was laying grounds for infrastructure development, improving the ease of doing business and fighting corruption but the magnitude of work was unknown to many Nigerians.
The industrialist acknowledged that no government would find itself in the circumstance the nation found itself and fold its hands, adding that the administration was indeed doing well.
He added that “we are satisfied that our own alumnus (Prof. Osinbajo), who is from the university of first choice and the university of the nation’s pride is doing a good job for us.
“We trust that Nigeria will be a different place in the nearest future.’’
According to him, the Association discusses the state of the nation and the state of the universities in the country with the vice president.
“We put across to him the problems of the nation, the problems of universities and the problems of the Alumni Association.
“And he very frankly responded.’’
Still on the economy, Kuku said Nigeria had no excuse not to be at par in development with India and South Africa.
He said that “we were above them many years ago, the difference is that our leaders in the past had been looking at themselves and their pockets; they had not been patriotic.
“What we need now is what is going on, where the leaders at the top are not interested in building houses for themselves or taking the money but interested in how to govern people.
“We have the resources; the most important resource in any country is the human being and we have 170 million.
“Nigerians are the most educated black people in the world; anywhere you go, you find brilliant Nigerians in different fields of endeavour.
“We have the human resources, what we need is just for us to harvest them and do it right, that is, people coming and seeing not what they can do for their own pockets.’’
Kuku noted that it was such attitude that fuelled the problems in the country, stressing that “Nigeria has resources, given to us by God free of charge.
“We have mineral resources everywhere and so many good things that God has done for us.
“We don’t have cataclysms, we don’t have hurricanes; all we have to do is use the resources to build our country but we are not doing so.’’
According to him, if the nation’s resources are well managed, Nigeria will be within the top 10 nations of the world in the next 10 years.
He said “I have no doubt at all whatsoever and I think that we have to be patient because there have been so much rot and if something is rotten, you have to clear it off and rebuild it.
“Nigerians should allow this to happen.’’