Rebranding Nigeria, A Stupid Waste Of Money’—Akinrinade

Former Chief of Defence Staff, Lt. General Alani Akinrinade (retd), has warned president Umaru Yar’Adua against wasting the nation’s scarce resources on re-branding a bad product named Nigeria.

“My sincere and honest advice to Yar’Adua is this; please do not waste our scarce resources on re-branding a bad product named Nigeria, no matter how popular and persuasive the sales lady is,” said Akinrinade, who spoke at a book presentation marking the 70th birthday of Mrs. Betty Bakare.

According to him, “it will make more sense to work on our human resources, infrastructure and our moral rearmament to win ourselves a respectable place in the comity of nations, than to embark on an expensive time-wasting and infantile deceit.”

He lamented that corruption remains a big problem to the nation, stressing that the war against corruption was truly on, “but we cannot defeat corruption by jailing a few unlucky people. “I urge the president to lead a massive and sustained national campaign for moral regeneration. Moral regeneration must be the pillar of his declared ambition to make Nigerians have zero tolerance for corruption,” he added.

Akinrinade also said the nation’s economy was in crisis, as it had already melted before the global economic meltdown. “I believe that even without the global meltdown, our economy was headed for trouble anyway, given the series of panic-induced measures that passed for hard-headed economic management all these years.

“One notable consequence of our economic management is the emergence of what I call the ‘Me-First Generation.’ This is the greedy generation that thinks more of the right of the individual to corner the national wealth and less of the nation itself. No nation can develop by allowing the few to corner its wealth and allow the many to perish in poverty and squalor,” he stated.

He lamented that some compatriots who worked assiduously towards the Nigeria of our dream died in frustration, adding that, “even as we speak, some of our compatriots are slowly dying of frustration too, because incompetence, corruption and moral bankruptcy becloud the future.

“A country so richly blessed by God finds itself in a state of self-induced confusion and apparent helplessness. Its leaders at all levels are thus unable to deploy its diverse human resources and national endowments to serve the noble end of the common good. “Are we not embarrassed when we see our oil-rich nation numbered among some of the poorest countries on earth? We should be embarrassed. We should be ashamed.” Akinrinade also feels devastated that the nation had not been able to celebrate one day of uninterrupted power supply since attaining statehood, 49 years ago.