Former Vice President, World Bank, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, yesterday declared that the continuous dependence on oil and gas would not take Nigeria to its anticipated state of development.
Ezekwesili, a former minister of education, stated this at the first national education summit of the Oil and Gas Trainers Association of Nigeria (OGTAN) in Lagos. Without development of human capital and local content, Nigeria’s vast natural resources, she said, would amount to nothing when put at par with developed countries of the world.
“It doesn’t matter what quantity of oil and gas, and minerals still existing in our grounds. Without developing human capacity and local content, we might as well as heading for collapse,” she declared adding, “oil and gas is a means to an end.
The end is about the development of human capital.” Stating that “the discretionary allocation of oil blocks led to massive and grand corruption in Nigeria,” the former minister maintained that to this end, “we entrenched the system of licensing and marginal fields allocation in order to encourage local players.” She continued: “But I guess politicians assumed marginal fields would be distributed to them without due process.”
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