Dogara: Other countries have passed through recession

Yakubu Dogara, speaker of the house of representatives, on Saturday said other countries have passed through the challenges confronting Nigeria.

Speaking in Abeokuta, Ogun state capital, at a lecture organised as part of programmes for the 75th birthday celebration of Alani Bankole, father of former Speaker of the house, Dimeji Bankole, Dogara called on Nigerians to support the government and be united in tackling the challenges to fast-track the process of economic recovery.

He said citizens of countries which have witnessed such critical periods surmounted the situations because they waged united and formidable wars against the challenges.

“The challenges are not novel because a lot of countries have passed through them,” he said.

“It is always men and women of those generations that have stood up and solved the problems.

The speaker commended the federal government for the measures it had taken in ensuring that Nigeria came out of the recession.

He also lauded the call by the governors’ forum for a declaration of a state of emergency on the economic situation, adding that the national assembly would come up with its position as soon as it reconvened.

“It is our collective responsibility to combat our challenges and I thank God that there is a rallying call from the governors for a national emergency,” he said.

Dahiru Musdapher, a former chief justice of Nigeria, who was guest lecturer at the event, expressed regrets that the nation had continued to face more divisions more than a year after the 2015 election.

Musdapher bemoaned the emergence of various restive groups across the country, saying the nation could not afford the cost of another “genocidal implosion’’.

He spoke on the theme “The Question of Nigerian Unity.”

Musdapher observed that tribalism, nepotism, religious bigotry, violence and corruption had made national unity a mirage.

He said in spite of various mechanisms created to deal with Nigeria’s socio-political ailments, the country’s unity had continued to be threatened, with negative implications for its citizens.

The former CJN noted that it would require a modicum of unity for Nigeria to make necessary policy interventions that would turn its economy around.