The presidential candidate of the African Action Congress, Omoyele Sowore, has said generating solar energy in the northern part of Nigeria and other products like palm oil from the South can help to diversify Nigeria’s economy.
Sowore, while replying to questions on the distribution of resources on NTA, said technology had taken over across the globe, and “it is now the new resource.”
He noted that soon, crude oil would not be a major resource anymore “because people are moving away from the consumption of fossil fuel.”
This is coming as discussions on restructuring continue to deepen, as groups like the Oodua Peoples Congress and Yoruba Nation continue to push for self-determination.
Regional management of resources cannot also be disconnected from the discussions on restructuring.
“If the northern part of Nigeria starts producing solar power for the rest of Nigeria, don’t be surprised that they might be more valuable than oil. The sale of palm oil in the international market today is more profitable than crude oil,” he said in the Friday interview, according to a statement obtained Saturday.
According to him, to tackle the problem facing wealth distribution, it must be understood dimensionally that Nigeria is a very diverse nation.
“Geopolitically, Nigeria is divided into six regions and we have resources located in each region. It is not that resources have been scarce. Nigerian leaders once made it openly clear that they have money but their problem is how to spend it,” he claimed.
He said if elected president, he would allocate resources to every Nigerian region as they deserve it and ensure that every part of Nigeria that produces resources gets the largest share of those resources, while the rest get their fair share.
“There are structural and institutional problems of who should get what, and this will be addressed by the AAC’s strategy of creating a brand new constitution for Nigeria which would fundamentally and foundationally address the issue of resource ownership, distribution, allocation and percentage for who gets what.
“The most important thing is every citizen will count and they will get what they deserve, and put together, that will eradicate and erase that vocabulary called marginalisation,” Sowore added.
