A former Governor of Rivers State, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi has said that the current administration cannot solve Nigeria’s poverty issues.
He also said that, “even three or four administrations in Nigeria cannot do that because the level of poverty is deeply rooted.”
Amaechi said this when he fielded questions from reporters on the state of the nation.
The former Minister of Transport added, “Look at it this way; if an economy is running purely on agriculture and a new president comes and say no, no, that it won’t continue, we have to re-gig the economy to create productivity.
“Before you can finish creating such products, it would take more than 15 years because at that point, you are not just talking about agriculture, you are talking about industrialisation, you are talking about power, you are talking about roads and transportation.
“Now, the president is focusing on roads, power, and transportation.
“Look at the railway, if we do Lagos to Kano for $8.3 billion. Of the $8.3billion, N5 trillion is for just 1,500 km of railway meanwhile our budget is just N8trilion.
“If you remove N8.5 trillion from our budget on rail lines, what about salaries and other sectors of the economy? So no one government can fulfil all that.
“It is a gradual process and that is why we are taking the railway project in several segments.
“And then we are under political pressure from everybody who wants rail lines in their side to be done.
“We have done Abuja to Kaduna, we are doing Lagos to Ibadan, we have asked for a loan for Port Harcourt to Warri and then Benin to Onitsha while also trying to complete Ibadan to Kano.”
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