Asiodu seeks visionary leadership for 2040

Chief Philip Asiodu

The need for a well-articulated national vision, tagged “Vision 2040” has been proposed as panacea for the myriad of economic challenges bedeviling the country.In his lecture titled: “Unemployment, Youth Restiveness and Development Challenges,’’ delivered at the Njiko Aniocha Oshimili 2017 convention yesterday, a retired Federal Permanent Secretary, Chief Philip Asiodu, said that “the goal of independence and sovereignty, which was a uniting factor has long vanished, adding that the absence of national consciousness has resulted in the failure to lift the nation out of poverty.

According to Asiodu, the essential elements in Vision 2040 would include a National Economic Perspective Plan 2020-2040, adoption and implementation of all aspects of good governance, urgent amendments to the 1999 Constitution, a language policy to promote national integration, and universal compulsory good quality education for all citizens up to the age of 18.

Asiodu asserted that the new vision would also take into consideration, the eradication of all forms of corruption and the adoption of a realistic personal income policy.

Lamenting the rate of youth unemployment prevalent in the country, the senior citizen observed that about three quarter of crime in the world are committed by young men who are jobless and become readily disposed to social vices.He described the involvement of thousands who perish at the Mediterranean Sea and the traumatized youths returning from Libya as disgraceful and a national embarrassment.even as he said that over 40 per cent youths are unemployed as against the statistics of 2016.

He said: “What the country needs is a holistic approach. We need good patriotic, visionary national leadership and good governance, which result in rapid sustained economic development and social progress and improving standard of living and quality of life for the people in general.”

Meanwhile, the Delta State Commissioner for Women Affairs, Community and Social Development, Mrs. Omatshola Williams, yesterday, revealed why the state government empowered 525 women across the three senatorial districts in the state.

The commissioner said that the decision was part of the state government’s commitment at empowering women and improving on their wellbeing in the state.She said that Governor Ifeanyi Okowa’s administration had shown love for the wellbeing of women in the state in many ways, one of which was its organizing skills acquisition programmes for women in different areas of their choice.

The programmes, she said, were designed to enable the benefiting women acquire some viable skills that would help to boost their socio-economic wellbeing and in turn, that of the state.

To further encourage the women, the commissioner said that Governor Okowa had promised to double the number of benefiting women in 2018, adding that, the implication of this is that there is hope for economic prosperity for women in the state.