Failure Of Planning Cause Of Insurgency – Aregbesola Tells Nigeria's Statistician

The Governor of Osun, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, on Thursday attributed the protracted insurgency in the North-East of the country to planning failure and several years of neglect.

This was even as the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) Osun Chapter charged public office holders to urgently declare war against corrupt practices.

Workers in the state stated this through the Chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress Jacob Adekomi who led his members on an anti corruption rally which took place across Nigeria on Thursday.

Aregbesola while declaring open the 39th Annual Conference of the Nigerian Statistical Association (NSA) in So go, said the problem of the North-Eastern part of Nigeria is not that of military but a direct fallout of lack of planning, adequate gathering of statistical data and outright neglect by successive governments since independence.

According to him, the North-Eastern part of the country because of the neglet of human capacity development and lack of infrastructure before independence till date.

He lamented that of the six geo-political zones of the country, North-East is the poorest in terms of Electricity supply health as well as other social infrastructural which led to the carnage the country is witnessing today.

He said, “the problem of North east is not what the military option alone can solve. The problem of insurgency in the North-East is a direct fallout of several years of neglect and abandonment of a particular set of people.

“Empirical data has clearly shown that since the nation got its independence, the North-East has been the least interms of human development index in Nigeria.

“In terms of electricity, Schools, social infrastructure, infant mortality, and quality health services used in measuring human development, North-East occupies the lowest rung of the ladder among the six geo-political zones of the country.

“Absence of all these social amenities led to the degeneracy being witnessed in the Northern part of the country today.

“To my mind, the only way to mitigate the calamity that befalls us is to close the yearning gap in human development with other regions of Nigeria”. The governor stressed.

The governor added that without statistics, there can be no governance itself, saying statistics on a broader scale goes beyond governance.

‎Aregbesola described statistics as the backbone of any business endeavour and enterprise and society, “for government, a systematic and conscious application of statistical methods and principles is an imperative without which no government can function.

“It is therefore necessary to have a functional and effective statistics department. ‎As we speak, we are carrying out a verification of workers in the state to determine our true wage bill.

“Though this may be accompanied with some discomfort, it is much needed for effective management of scarce resources”. He emphasised.

The NLC in a letter addressed to the Governor entitled: “National Day of Action Against Corruption and For Good Governance,” and signed by the Nation President, Comrade Ayuba Waba, said Thursday was set aside by labour to draw attention of the political authorities to damage that corruption has caused to the nation.

The letter also stated that NLC used the campaign tagged A National Day of Action and Protest to underscore a deep concern for overbloated and unsustainable cost of governance.

The letter said in part: “We are convinced that this action has become necessary to bring to the fore the urgent need for a national discourse to drastically reduce the cost of governance at all levels (Federal, State and Local Government) against the background of the fall in the price of crude oil, our main source of foreign revenue.

“There is also an urgent need to review and strengthen our anti-corruption legislation. This will remove such loopholes where punishment for crime of conspiracy, breeze of trust and embezzlement of N32.8bn police fund was a mere 2-year sentence.”

Earlier in his address, the National President of NSA, Dr. Muhammed Tumala said the financial crises experienced in 1990s and 2008 were caused by gulf in the knowledge of the nation’s economy.

Tumala stated that it was against the background of the crisis that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) introduce two systems in 1995 to ensure that nation’s collect and disseminate data to improve knowledge and understanding of the economy.

The statistician boss noted that the national association was in Osun to interact with government on issues relating to developments in the production processes of statistics in Nigeria.

“Since 2007, progresses have been recorded at both federal and state levels towards fully establishing statistical system for Nigeria.

“In addition to interaction between our members, we are also here in Osun to interact with your government on issues pertaining to developments in the production processes of statistics in Nigerian,” Tumala.