By Dirisu Yakubu, Abuja
Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi has said there is nothing wrong with the demands for a restructuring of the nation but notes however that the twin vices of hunger and poverty are more critical to the federal government of Nigeria.
Ameachi who stated this yesterday, in a Channels Television programme, Sunday Politics, said: “If to you what is important is restructuring, I don’t see anything wrong with restructuring but I am saying it is not the most critical problem we have. The most critical problem we have is that hunger and poverty are breeding insecurity.”
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The Minister added that the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government is committed to tackling poverty squarely through job creation at all levels.
He said: “If you are able to create employment, you create security. If you like hire as many men as you want to hire that are policemen, you would do nothing until you put food in the hands of people,” stressing that “When you do not create a legitimate economy, the people will create for themselves an illegitimate economy and be able to feed themselves.”
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Lamenting the inability of many farmers to access their farms in some parts of the country, the former governor of Rivers state urged Nigerians to remember that the security situation in the country today is like unlike what the nation has seen in the past.
“We are facing a different kind of insecurity,” the minister noted, a few days after the United Nations said at least 110 civilians were ruthlessly killed and many others wounded when Boko Haram insurgents attacked villages near Maiduguri, the Borno State capital.
“When we were in power as governors, the problem we were facing was Boko Haram. Now, it is much more than Boko Haram. We need to address those issues, ” he counselled.
The post Hunger, poverty more important than restructuring ― Amaechi appeared first on Vanguard News.
Source: Vanguard Newspaper
