 |
| Chairman, Viatfoam Nigeria Plc, Chief Samuel Bolarinde |
The
Chairman, Viatfoam Nigeria Plc, Chief Samuel Bolarinde, has blamed the
country’s poor economic performance on resource mismanagement and lack
of competitive vision on the part of politicians and leaders.
Apart from the general mismanagement of the economy,
Bolarinde, while addressing shareholders at the 2011 Annual General
Meeting of the company in Lagos on Monday, said the economic doldrums
could be partly traced to the kind of political and governance structure
being run in the country.
He cited the disparity between salaries and
allowances being earned by legislators and members of the Executive arm
of government, and their counterparts in the United States as a key
illustration of how not to run a country.
He said, “It is no longer a secret that the cost of
governance has remained unnecessarily high in Nigeria, in comparison to
most of other nations of the world. Government structures at the three
tiers are rather unwieldy and out of tune with the country’s economic
realities.
“The US, which has a population of 308 million, has a
Congress of 100-member Senate and a 435-member House of
Representatives; Nigeria, with a population of less than half of the US,
has a National Assembly of 109-member Senate and a 360-member House of
Representatives.”
Bolarinde added, “The per capital income in the US is
$47,701, as against that of Nigeria’s $2,249. But while an American
senator earns $174,000 annually, his Nigeria counterpart is believed to
cost taxpayers about $1.7m annually.
No comments:
Post a Comment