Nigeria Still Grappling with Development Challenges, Says PLAC

Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja

A leading policy and development advocacy organization, the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre, PLAC, has said that Nigeria is yet to meet her expectations in terms of improvement in politics and development despite over 25 years of democratic rule.

In the political sphere, the Centre said that the country has never in its history witnessed the limiting of political space, threat of a one party and poor women representation in governance as it is at present.

Speaking at the orientation workshop for 40 PLAC-National Assembly Interns in Abuja, sponsored by the European Union, the Executive Director of PLAC, Mr. Clement Nwankwo, said the country has been grappling with the issues of development and democratic governance for over two decades now.

He said: “It’s every time we hear that the conditions in the country will improve, and sometimes people say that the condition continues to deteriorate.”

He expressed regret that Nigeria has been struggling with generating 3000 4000 kilowatts of power for the last 20 years, thus making it difficult for the population to enjoy stable electricity.

“I haven’t seen anyone who says, oh, politics has improved, or that conditions have improved. The reality, of course, is that things have improved, but they could be better.

“A lot of us are very worried about how slow things are in getting better, and what we worry about that, it means that we want to see our country develop when we are satisfied with where we are, and it means that we have nothing to add to the development of the country, but this country can be so much, so much, so much better”.

Nwankwo said the choice of the 40 participants in the internship programme was a product painstaking exercise reflecting fairness and professionalism.

Nwankwo told the interns that they should be worried about what politics means and what the politicians are doing with the future of the country adding that as young people the future of Nigeria is in their hands.

“You who are here must feel sufficiently angry, about where the country is and feel challenged as a result to do something different,” he said.

He said the purpose of the legislative internship is to enable the interns understand how democracy works, and how they can, in whatever space they find themselves make their contributions to the development of the country.

A Board member of PLAC, Dr. Mero Mandara, lamented the poor state of affairs in the country especially the very slow pace of development in the country.

She said that the country has continued to witness decreasing inclusion of women in the politics.

She told the interns they are very special group of people, “You’re very special because Nigeria is at a crossroad in the history of democracy.

“I’m not sure we’ve ever had a one-party system like we have right now in the history of country; there’s never been since military, even during military, we’ve never had such few numbers of women in the political space like we have now,” he said.

In her remarks, the EU Programme Officer in Nigeria, Laolu Olawumi said the interest of the European Union in sponsoring the programme is the belief that democracy only truly thrives, when young people are not just spectators, but key participants.

“We can see in Nigeria that with the population of Nigerian voters, we have a huge percentage of young people that would decide who should they participate in the process, the next group of leaders that we are going to get,” she said.

Earlier in his speech of the Clerk of the National Assembly, Kamoru Ogunlana urged the 40 participants in this year’s legislative internship programme to try and make good use of the opportunity.

“Your deployment to the National Assembly, therefore, offers you a rare and valuable opportunity to observe governance and parliamentary democracy in practice as intense as it is in the National Assembly.

“The National Assembly bureaucracy is built on professionalism and non-partisanship and you are expected to uphold these values throughout your state in the national assembly, in or outside of the complex,” he said.