A former Group Managing Director of the Odu’a Investment Company Limited, Sir Remi Omotoso, on Thursday said corruption would not have become so endemic without the tacit collaboration of professional managers.
He said they are partly responsible for the country’s woes, which he said President Muhammadu Buhari is now battling to deal with.
Omotoso said corruption and poor management of resources has been the bane of Nigeria development.
“Between 1999 and now, Nigeria made trillions of dollars, enough to make it one of the richest countries of the world and with enviable potential.
“Unfortunately, a tiny but extremely powerful group, through corruption and impunity, cornered more than 90 per cent of the commonwealth while poverty continues to rage the land,” he said.
Omotoso spoke while delivering a lecture entitled: The role of professional managers in driving real change in Nigeria during the Nigerian Institute of Management (NIM) Awards, Fellows and Spouses Day Luncheon in Lagos.
He said: “ Many professional managers have been, over time, facilitators and collaborators in fostering the evils that are responsible for the rot and woes of our nation, particularly on the issues of corruption, inequity, cover-ups, wasteful spending, abandonment of projects, substandard performance of contract jobs, over and under valuation of assets and other such deeds and collaborations unbecoming of our professional ethics, values and standards.”
According to Omotoso, no project can be designed, evaluated, bidded for and contracted out for execution without the involvement of professional managers.
“How come Nigerian contracts, particularly in the areas of infrastructure, are among the most outrageously expensive in the world? Why should constructing a kilometer of road in Nigeria cost about ₦1billion Naira whereas it would cost about ₦350 million in some other places in environment of similar characteristics with our own?
“How come our roads, despite the high cost, collapse after a few years of use? Were they designed in the first instance to fail so that new contracts can be awarded to repair or rebuild them? What about those abandoned projects, over 12,500 of them scattered all over the place in Nigeria and worth over ₦12 trillion? “
Omotoso said Nigerians voted the All Progressives Congress (APC) because of President Muhammadu Buhari integrity, adding that it will be unfair to expect him to single-handedly effect the changes Nigeria needs.
The President, he said, requires various institutions and all Nigerians to buy into the prevailing mood of change.
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