Dr. Obadiah Mailafia

Dr Obadiah Mailafia with former Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete last week in Abuja.

  Poverty is a curse. It generates all manner of social evils. Poor housing and slums breed dislocated youths that become vulnerable to extreme ideologies. There is a direct correlation between hunger, unemployment and destitution on the one hand, and drugs and violent crime, on the other. There was the tragic case of the mother who sold her nursing infant to strangers for N70,000. Poverty destroys families, rips communities apart, strips people of dignity and corrodes the moral fabric of society. With a population of 198.5 million and a GDP of US$397.5 billion, Nigeria has a per capita income of US$2,050. Growth over the last couple of years has been negative in real terms. The projection for 2019 is 2.3%, even as our demographic growth is an annual 3.2 percent. Life-expectancy is 54 years, as contrasted to Japan’s 84 years. The average Japanese lives 19 more years than the average Nigerian. At the annual World Bank/IMF meetings in Bali, Indonesia in December last yea...

Despite the postponement, intimidation and outright manipulation, the Nigerian people showed great resilience last two Saturdays in coming out en masse to exercise their democratic franchise. This week, by the grace of God, we have known who our president-elect is. A new president must hit the ground running. He would certainly face an in-tray of formidable to-do priorities. 1)            The transition team . The new administration must begin with a transition team comprising sober-minded technocrats whose job is to put together a viable framework for the incoming administration; serving as a link between the outgoing and incoming. The transition team will process detailed briefings covering all ministries, departments and agencies of government. They will prepare a memo for the president-elect on the state of public finances and progress on implementation of ongoing projects. The team in turn will digest the directives ...

The Presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Dr Obadiah Mailafia, expresses his warm congratulations to the winner of the recently concluded elections, President Muhammadu Buhari. We came 3 rd in that process, with little or no money and no campaign resources. We celebrate this victory for the people. The election process was by no means perfect.  There were egregious anomalies in several polling stations. And we severely frown at the post-election provocative behaviour of youths carrying daggers, sticks and other dangerous weapons in the streets, all in the name of celebration. Despite these challenges, we remain democrats and we remain fervent believers in the New Nigeria Project.  It is in this spirit that I congratulate President Muhammadu Buhari and wish him better health and more wisdom as he prepares to steer the affairs of our great country during another four years. Now is the time to rally our people beyond the narrow confines ...