Vice President Kashim Shettima has proffered solutions to Nigeria’s growing problems of poverty and insecurity, noting that, the poor are angry with the government.
Shettima on Saturday noted that Nigerian citizens have contempt for politicians and public office holders and that insecurity in the north and southeast perpetuated by Boko Haram, bandits and IPOB can be resolved.
He however explained that job creation would resolve most of Nigeria’s lingering problems and bring peace and prosperity to the biggest economy in Africa.
“All of us here belong to a tiny segment of the Nigerian population. And you don’t need a soothsayer to tell you that the poor are angry with us. Go to the slums and mingle with the poor. I am a native of Maiduguri. Anytime a rich man brought a new car to his house, it (the house) used to be a place of pilgrimage,” he told The Punch newspaper.
“People go and see (government officials) not out of anger, but out of admiration. But now, as we cruise around in our bulletproof cars, one will see contempt in the eyes of the poor. We have to improve the quality of governance. And what we have is a tiny window of not more than 10 to 20 years. Let’s improve the quality of governance.”
Shettima, an All Progressives Congress chieftain and running mate to President Bola Tinubu in the 2023 presidential election added “Let’s create jobs; let’s give hope to the populace. And once we create jobs, all this madness of insecurity will disappear. There won’t be Boko Haram and banditry if this is done, especially for us from the North. We can blame the bandits, but we in leadership positions owe it to posterity to address this.
“They (the poor) are the most neglected segment of our society. You can hardly differentiate between them and their animals. Even the animals they rear belong to those in the city. So, there have to be kinetic and non-kinetic solutions to all the problems. Be it the IPOB agitation in the South-East; be it the challenges in the South-South; be it Boko Haram or rural banditry in the North-East, North-West, and North-Central,” Shettima said.
