Candidate of the Action Alliance (AA) in the 2023 governorship election in Kogi State, Otunba Olayinka Braimoh, has said that the precarious economic situation which has resulted in the exodus of economically viable youths outside the country can only be reversed by visionary leadership.
Citing the specific case of Kogi State, in an interview in Abuja, Braimoh noted that “We look at Kogi as one of the poorest states because the assets it has that are not converted to wealth, which is why people are dying of poverty.
“So, changing the narrative requires having a visionary leader at the helm of affairs” He added.
He said it is the absence of visionary leadership to tap the vast resources that has pushed many to embrace the “japa” syndrome to which millions of human resources have been lost.
“Today, what are we battling with? We are battling with “japa” and so many parents today are crying deep inside of them because their children are lost forever, disconnected from their roots. They don’t want to come home and they will never come home.
Why because there’s no home to come back to because of lack of visionary leadership”
The governorship aspirant said a key embarrassing situation was the movement of Nigerian leaders to Kigali (Rwanda) for meeting.
According to him, if it’s resources are well harnessed, Kogi can run independent of Nigeria without having to depend on federal allocations.
“So in terms of our resources, Kogi can run independently of Nigeria. I mean Kogi is bigger than Rwanda in terms of land area. Our resources are more than the resources Rwanda has. So what are we talking about? The resources we have in Kogi State is way more than the resources Rwanda has.
“Look, Rwanda has a population of about 12.5million people. Right? Kogi has a population of about 4.5million people. So what does that suggest to you? When we’re talking about per capita, does that not mean that an average person in Kogi should be richer than an average person in Rwanda? We’re talking about visionary leadership” Braimoh noted.
He lamented that “Nigerians are going to Rwanda. Our governors went to do meeting in Kigali for God’s sake. We have Agbaja Plateau in Kogi. We have Mount Plati. All of these places not developed due to lack of visionary leadership.Now, imagine if we’re able to develop all of these things, you will have the conference right there.
We have Oni Dam, we have Oraha, we have Obangogo and several other tourist locations that can host World-class conferences because we can have conference facilities to host any events, a whole lot of these things”.
Accordingly to him, “In terms of urban development, the kind of designs that we do, the kind of layouts that we do, visionary leadership is the only thing that is required because without visionary leadership, all of these things will keep eluding us. They’ve been eluding us for long”