Samuel Egwu, a political science professor, has emphasized the necessity for Nigeria to tackle the issue of poverty, stating that strengthening democracy is essential to accomplishing that goal.
As part of celebrations for 2025 Democracy Day, he made this statement on Thursday while giving the keynote address at a Democracy Day lecture held at the State House in Abuja.
A country with as much wealth as Nigeria should not remain the world’s center of poverty, according to Egwu, a resident electoral officer with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
We must consider why a nation so rich in resources, human potential, and decent people would have the greatest concentration of the poorest people in the world today. We are negatively impacted by the fact that this nation has been named the global center of poverty.
“And we have less population than China and India and then look at the percentage of people that are in extreme poverty, look at the fragile state index and all other key indicators for development, we are not doing well. And that is why we need to reinforce our democracy so that we can address these challenges,” he stated.
According to the guest professor, the nation’s poverty issue is a cumulative result of post-colonial Nigeria’s failure, and everyone should feel bad about not taking the necessary steps to address it.
According to the professor, Nigeria required a paradigm change in terms of statecraft, democratic governance, and governance going ahead.
Egwu went on to say that in the ongoing constitutional reform program, the President must support the sovereignty of the state assembly.
That will alter the subnational level of government narrative, he said.
“This is something we shouldn’t play with, he continued.
