“ I Pray Nigeria Oil Dries Up So We Can Start Using Our Brains ” – Governor El- Rufai

Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State, says
he desires for Nigeria’s crude oil to get
exhausted so the nation can start to seriously
develop other revenue sources.
According to the governor, the oil wealth
accruing to the country constitutes a major
obstacle to Nigeria’s ability to think and
innovate its way out of underdevelopment.
He wishes the oil wells and the ‘free money’
there from dry up so that the government and
the people can get serious about making the
country realize its full potentials.
El-Rufai made this known yesterday, Saturday
in Ibadan while speaking at the 2017 town hall
meeting/founder’s day celebration in memory
of Ojetunji Aboyade, a renowned economist.

He said:

“Because Nigeria gets easy
money from oil, the nation has
lost its thinking initiative on how
to develop other sources of
revenue and diversify the
economy.
“We get easy money, we do not
collect taxes and our taxes are
six per cent of Gross Domestic
Product; that is an average of
21per cent. We stop respecting
the intellectuals that we have in
our universities because we get
easy money.

“This is very sad, I wish the oil
will dry up so that we can begin
to use our brains because we
have stopped using our brains
and we have stopped respecting
intellects because of easy money.
“ ”
“It is obvious that Nigeria is
severely under-policed, and will
require more personnel,
intelligence assets, better
training, technology and
equipment for its security
agencies for the country to be a
credible guarantor of security.
“Even if these were to be
available, it is also debatable
whether a single centralised
policing system, structure and
staffing for 200 million citizens is
viable in a diverse, multi-lingual,
multi-cultural and multi-ethnic
nation like Nigeria.”

“ ”
“To complement the pursuit of
the Sustainable Development
Goals, we must have discourse
around the imperative of a
project dedicated to enabling
equal opportunity so that the
circumstances of a citizen’s birth
don’t prescribe his or her ceiling
in life.

“How can we promote a national
subscription to meritocracy?
How can we ensure that the
imperative of reflecting federal
character does not become the
enemy of merit and quality of
appointments? Today, we don’t
plan. We don’t have national
plan and if we don’t plan, we are
planning to fail.
“Having suffered brain drain,
how do we attract back our
Diaspora and the brain-gain
associated with it like the
Chinese and Indians have
witnessed? These are the
questions a distributive mentality
around easy oil revenues is
dodging.
“The earlier the oil dries up the
better for our national ability to
think, be innovative and respect
intellect and academic
achievement.

el-Rufai spoke on “Public Policy research

should promote national consensus.”