Nigeria tops on jumbo salaries for govt officials – Obi

By Raphael Ede

Enugu

Former Governor of Anambra State, Mr Peter Obi, has lamented that Nigeria ranks high among governments in the world with bloated salary structure for top government officials when her citizens are languishing in penury.
Gov Obi, who decried this development while delivering a lecture entitled: “Good Governance” during the 10th National Youth Summit organised by Golden Heart Foundation in Enugu, weekend, said it was high time the structure was changed.
“The cost of governance in Nigeria is very unacceptable anywhere in the world. We need to change it. About 1.7 million children are out of school in Nigeria, that’s the highest statistics in the whole world.
Further, Obi said the current agitations in the country were as a result of accumulation of failures of governance noting that the governance in the country collapsed so many years ago.
“The only way to fight social disorder is to find people things to do. Create a society where people will have the opportunity to do something for themselves.
“I encourage youths not to be disillusioned by the environment they find themselves in. Your country has been hijacked and you have to take it back. If you don’t stop them, they will stop you,” he said.
Earlier, the President of Golden Heart Foundation and host of the summit 2017, Dr David Ogbueli, urged youths to pay attention to whatever training they will receive for a better tomorrow.
According to him, the greatest challenges afflicting the country today are traceable to poor leadership adding that the responsibility of changing Nigeria to a better one rests on the youth.
“We are out to find those who are gifted in different areas and to help them fully discover and develop their areas of gift and eventually deploy them to the society as agents of transformation”, he said.
He said that the Foundation was developing youths, through global school of leadership, school of national transformation, career development, business development, enterprise and skill acquisition, social entrepreneurship, media and ICT and arts and entertainment, who would eventually bring back the glory of the nation.
“We want to build a new generation of value-driven and responsible leaders that will think excellence, integrity, accountability, vision and passion for common good,” Ogbueli pointed out.

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