NBA president faults govt on growth strategy

The President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Augustine Alegeh (SAN) has faulted successive government effort to provide the required vision and expertise needed to ignite economic growth in the country since independence. According to him, Nigeria has witnessed several instances of abuse of office and mismanagement of natural resources by those entrusted with its commonwealth.

Alegeh, who delivered a lecture entitled, “Law and National Development at the 15th Annual Justice Idigbe Memorial Lecture, organised by the Faculty of Law, University of Benin stated,

“It has become imperative to examine the relationship between law and National Development in nation building, added that governments world over, are increasingly engaging in law reforms programmes as they seek to ignite, support and sustain economic growth and development in their countries and Nigeria must not be different.”

Lamenting he said, “though Nigeria’s crude oil and gas reserves have continued to increase over the years, our enormous endowment, Nigeria has not been able to record significant economic growth and development relative to our resources.”

He noted further that the reason for Nigeria’s economic woes and setback were identifiable as absence of rule of law, corruption, insecurity and failure to implement extant laws, adding that several programmes were initiated and sold to the public as policies and programmes designed to boost development and economic growth at all levels, but regretted that “these programmes were mere conduits to siphon and loot the public treasury.”

According to him, “The few of such programmes that worked and impacted positively on the lives of the citizens were later abandoned by successive governments that erroneously thought that these programmes had served their purposes being the initiatives of previous administrations.

“One remembers with nostalgia, the days when the US Dollars was lower than the Naira at about 70K-$1. During those days, the Naira was considered to be a very strong currency exchange in the world market based on the value of products Nigeria exported. Presently, we are faced with the sad reality of having the currency exchange rate at $1 to N320.”

Alegeh who disclosed that the petroleum industry has undergone several modifications and reform however noted with dismay that, “it is rather unfortunate that despite discovering crude oil over 59 years ago, we are yet to enact an Act that has the capacity to regulate all activities within the petroleum sector.

He reiterated that attempt by the National Assembly to balkanise the petroleum Industry Bill and pass it piecemeal is certainly not the solution to the problem in the Oil and Gas Reform, adding that the PIB is expected to address the constant face -off between Oil companies and their host communities.

“The PIB should address the issue of the destruction of the ecosystem via pollution of the water system leading to the death of fishes and other sea animals. The PIB should also be able to address the issue of youth restiveness and militancy in the Niger Delta region. These and many more issues are expected to be addressed by the PIB as part of the reforms expected to be introduced in the oil and gas sector”, Alegeh stated.