A former Aviation Minister, Osita Chidoka has criticised the Federal Government for failing to keep its promise to the Nigerian people.
He said there is a multi-ethnic collation that has run the country down which has made Nigerians use ethnicity in accruing power.
Giving an example, Mr Chidoka explained that most of the elites use power to ensure their children get top positions in high places.
“When I became Corps Marshal, the Nigerian elite approached me for jobs for their constituents.
“If you go to NNPC, NCC, or all the top parastatals of government, it is the children of Nigerian elites, the children of judges, permanent secretaries, the children of the current public servants that occupy these institutions.
“The Nigerian masses have been duped for the past 60 years,” the added.
The former minister disclosed this on Thursday during The Platform, a programme aired on Channels Television which marked Nigeria’s 60th Independence Anniversary.
He noted that these groups of collations do not mean well for Nigerians but rather for themselves.
He challenged the youths for not coming out to speak but instead support the situation by hiding under religion, ethnicity, or money.
“Now the challenge is that the Nigerian public, the Nigerian young people that should fight against this capture of state power, have turned around, hiding under ethnicity, religion, or money. We are in a difficult situation”.
He asked Nigerian youths to wake up and take the power that belongs to them.
Mr Chidoka further noted the nation is suffering from three major crises, including insecurity led by Boko Haram which “we have been at war for 11 years and it has consumed our natural resources and people.
The second point is oil which he stated is going out of fashion, stressing that “our critical source of revenue which is oil is becoming something that over the next few years will no more bring in the kind of wealth we have seen in the past.”
The third point, according to the former minister, is the tension that Nigerians are facing in “social ethnic problems in the southeast, the ODUA now in the southwest, Boko Haram in the northeast, farmer/herders crisis in the northcentral, there is now a new impetus for new leadership to emerge”.
He added that if Nigeria has to survive in the next 60 years, “It has to take a proper decision in 2020 to determine how to build a nation where no man is impressed”.
