The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Alhaji Aminu Tambuwal in Kaduna on Tuesday decried the country’s over-reliance on oil.
The Speaker said that he believed without the revenue accruing to the states from crude oil receipts, most of the states would have packed up.
Tambuwal, who was more concerned about the effect of the development on the North, expressed the view that years of being pampered by the massive oil revenue had made the region intellectually lazy and bringing the region more problems than it could resolve.
The Speaker, who made this known at the inauguration of the new leadership of the Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF, noted that it would be more justified to consider a Nigeria without the over-arching influence of oil on the nation’s politics and economy.
The Speaker said, “I know that a future without oil, which provides most of our external earnings, is not a future to be contemplated lightly. I know that as things stand right now, without the money from the Federation Account, most of it derived from oil, practically every state in Nigeria, not just in the North, will collapse.
“Years of being pampered by the massive revenue that oil provides, with such abundant ease, have made all of us intellectually lazy, reduce the place of hard work in the polity, compromise morals, and cause more troubles than it has resolved”.
Tambuwal argued that the economy of the region could only flourish again if the agriculture sector was fully revived and utilised.