A Former Deputy Senate President, Ibrahim Mantu, yesterday in Abuja declared that the country’s politicians who were privileged to serve the nation in various positions, past and present, have failed the nation.
In an address at the Commonwealth Day, which was organised by the Commonwealth Society of Nigeria to mark the Day in Nigeria, Senator Mantu admitted that the general level of underdevelopment, insecurity, corruption and poverty in the land was a result of the failure of politicians to deliver the dividends of democracy to the people whom they were elected or brought into office to cater for.
He declared: “We politicians have sinned against Nigerians and above all against God Almighty. We have to ask Nigerians for forgiveness for our misdeeds.
“All of us who were given opportunity to rule have let the nation down. If we do not repent sincerely there cannot be peace.”
Senator Mantu said as Professor Yusufu Obaje stated in his earlier paper, God Almighty gave the master key of resources of this world to the nation, but because of poor governance , they have
not been utilised appropriately to improve the lot of the people.
He said the country is blessed to such an extent that there is no state in the federation that does not have one mineral or the other, including the oil-producing states.
He said a friend who visited him from Israel not long ago literally shed tears on why God should bless Nigeria with so much resources , far more than what He gave “His chosen
people.
Mantu said that his Israelite had said enviously that “if God had given them, in Israel, one- tenth of the land He gave Nigeria, their country will not be lacking anything. But see how land and other resources are being wasted by Nigerians. This made him to cry. Only few countries in the world are as blessed by God as Nigeria he told me.”
In his key note address titled, “Positive Change begins with me”, Prof. YusufuAmehObaje, who served as the chaplain at the Presidential Villa, Aso Rock,under former President Olusegun Obasanjo said the greatest challenge facing the nation was its inability to manage the enormous resources placed at its disposal by God Almighty.
He said metaphorically that while God gave the key of resources to Nigerians “in the midst of heated debate and crisis of custodianship or ownership they misplaced the resources’ master key. Since then the search for the missing key has taken
Culled From NIGERIAN PILOT
