AKANIMO SAMPSON

UTUAMA BLAMES NIGERIA's SUCCESSION CRISIS ON LEADERS

THE problematic succession crisis that has been the bane of Nigeria's politics since the 1960s has blamed on leaders at all levels in the country.

Delta State Deputy Governor, Amos Utuama, a law professor and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) says it is high time political leades began to put their acts together for the interest of the country.

While locating the worrisome inability of successive administrations in the country to sustain existing policies on absence of proper succession and low capacity, he said at 50, Nigerian political elite and power seekers should learn to grow up and stop acting as infants.

AkanimoReports said on Tuesday that Utuama was speaking while receiving participants of the Senior Executive Course Participants at the Notational Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPPSS), on behalf of the Governor, Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan, observed that the inability to sustain existing policies was at the bane of the country’s developmental challenges.

He explained that one of the reasons why there has been persistent policy reversals and discontinuity in the country was because those leaving office do not groom successors that would carry on their laudable policies and programmes.

According to him, the result is that every administration that comes into power fashions out its own policies and programmes, which most of the time outrightly reverses the existing ones that could have moved development further.

Utuama, a professor of law, noted that the administration of Chief James Ibori, was able to avoid that pitfall, arguing that the emergence of the former Secretary to the State Government, who had also served as commissioner for health, as the governor, has helped in sustaining the former policies and programmes.

He informed that himself was the attorney general and commissioner for justice from 1999 to December, 2006, adding that even the current secretary to the state government, Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa, was a member of the state executive council for the said period.

Utuama also attributed the lack of policy sustenance on absence of the right capacity, explaining that where a policy that was formulated by a person with high intellectual capacity is being implemented by another person with low ability, there was bound to be policy failure.

Leader of the NIPSS Team, Prof Ajaka Ajak, had told the deputy governor that their visit was a fact finding one on the theme, “Policy Sustainability, National Security and Democratic Stability.”ENDS