A former Governor of Imo State, Senator Rochas Okorocha, on Monday said if the fundamental issues of poverty and injustice in Nigeria were not addressed, no amount of ammunitions can win a war against insecurity in the country.
The Senator, who spoke at the 2021 NBA -Spidel annual conference tagged: “The Role of Public Interest in Governance in Nigeria”, said there is a relationship between poverty and insecurity.
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Okorocha however raised hope for Nigeria’s unity as an entity despite agitation for secession from different regions of the country.
Okorocha said: “Let us not go out of here with the belief that Nigeria is finished. Nigeria is a great country and it can’t finish. New Nigeria will soon come. There is injustice and poverty in Nigeria. There is a cold relationship between poverty and insecurity. As long as these two evils of mankind have not been addressed, you might import all the equipment in this world to fight insurgency and banditry, it won’t yield any result.
“Our problem is injustice and poverty. I heard Governors Bala Muhammad and Rotimi Akeredolu speaking on ranching. I see it as injustice when a little boy travels about 1000 and 2000 kilometers as a herder on foot. For me, the injustice done to the boy is more than all this discussion put together.”
Earlier, the President of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), Olumide Apata said terrorists have taken their attacks to a new deadly dimension in Nigeria for ransacking villages in the region and stamping their authority.
At the event, the Governor of Bauchi State, Alhaji Bala Muhammad and his Ondo State counterpart, Arakunrin Rotimi Akeredolu (SAN) debated the way forward for Nigeria over banning of open grazing in the country.
While Akeredolu justified the decision of the southern governors to ban open grazing in the region, Bala aligned himself with the position of the PDP governors.
Akeredolu said the statement made by the Attorney-General of the Federation, comparing ban of open grazing with spare parts selling in the North is most uncalled for and had shown his own mindset
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