The Emir of Kano and former CBN Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi has said that Nigeria is better off with Lagos State than with the Niger Delta.
He made this comment in a fiery speech he gave at the 15th meeting of the Joint Planning Board and National Council on Development Planning. The speech was delivered from a paper entitled “Nigeria In Search Of New Growth model” and was also Published on Nairametrics.
Here is exactly what he said;
Lagos has done very well. If I have money to invest, I will invest it in Lagos, because it is attracting investment. Lagos has realized a long time ago that the government cannot fund all it needs. And I just love what Lagos has done. The Lagos story is a story of what Nigeria can do with itself – transparency, consistency, regulations – and people can be rich. There is no problem if people can be rich while growing an economy. Nobody minds. But, in Nigeria people become rich when people are dying. Let’s take the Lagos story, and that’s why today Lagos state is 30% Nigerian non-oil GDP, and Lagos can do without oil.
Lagos can do without the rest of this country. So, we must not let Lagos go.
This country is better off with Lagos than with the Niger Delta. Let’s not make that mistake. We should be together as a country. Every part of the country is important. But, let us not be so obsessed by a resource, because we have had the commodity driven model, and we are blind to the potentials of an alternative model.
Lagos doesn’t need oil. What is oil anyway? It is a raw material. You don’t drink it. You need it to move your vehicles. Now, you have electricity. You need it to fill your generator. Now you have solar power, and biomass. The future of oil is not there. So, those few people who are trying to break up this country over oil, after sometime that oil will be worthless. You are better off being in a country that is based on this model. This is a country of the future, that is the past.
So what do you think? Is Lagos State the most important state in Nigeria?
