Moghalu declares intention to run for president
Former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Kingsley Moghalu, yesterday, has said the COVID-19 pandemic exposed lack of state capacity in Africa, insisting that the outbreak of the virus should not be an excuse for underdevelopment of the continent.
Moghalu, who was the 2019 presidential candidate of the Young Progressives Party (YPP), stated this at the 19th annual lecture of the Centre for Values in Leadership (CVL) in Lagos with the theme: Economic Evolution Of Life After COVID-19: Measures To Rebuild Economies Of Africa.
He questioned the readiness of Nigeria and the African continent for the post- COVID-19 order or whether they were at the end of the beginning or the beginning of something else.
Moghalu, who charged African countries to start looking for alternative sources of what he described as “systematic and structural financing,” told The Guardian that he would contest the presidency of the country in 2023.
“Some of the sources include land and taxation reforms. We need to have a conceptual and philosophical understanding of how we can raise and spend money for our development, because the philosophical choices we make will determine how far we can raise money,” he said.
He lamented that the country was operating a system where the government wants to do everything, award contracts, but was not opening up for Public Private Partnership (PPP).
Speaking, Founder of CVL, Prof. Pat Utomi, who spoke on Is There Economic Life After COVID, said: “Africa emerged from the tortured season of Afro-pessimism just as China and India were rising. The rise of those economies drove a commodities boom that propelled several African economies to dominate the league of the top 10 fastest-growing economies of the world.
“Then the commodities boom began to plateau and COVID-19 brought supply chain crisis, lower demand for crude oil and ports challenges. Is there life for African economies in such perilous times even as ACFTA prepares to facilitate the easing of such challenges as tariff and nontariff barriers to cross border trade, which colonial-era partition of Africa made deep chasms and obstruction to commerce.”
