Nigeria’s greatest problem is poverty, not ethnicity or religion – Duke

The presidential candidate of the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP), Donald Duke, Tuesday said poverty is the greatest problem of Nigeria and not religion and ethnicity.

 He said even if the country has only one religion and ethnic group and people are poor, there would be divisions, citing the example of Somalia with one language and yet divided because of poverty.

The former governor of Cross River state said he is in the 2027 presidential race because he  intends to change the trajectory of discussions about challenges confronting Nigeria ahead of the 2027 elections.

“A lot of younger people are losing hope because nobody is discussing what gives them hope for tomorrow,” he said.

Duke, who stated this at a round table with journalists in Abuja added that Nigeria is home to the highest numbers of out-of-school children and poor people in the world.

He said the only way to get Nigeria out of its myriads of development challenges is to tackle poverty by making the people productive.

“It doesn’t work like that. So all I’m asking for is let’s be honest with our people. Somalia is a country that has no ethnic groups. They are all one ethnic group and one religion. It’s mono-ethnic, mono-religion and they  are fighting.

“Why are they fighting?  So even in  the same family, when we are the same ethnic group, let’s say I’m Efik and you are Efik if we are poor, we will fight and everyone would like to use whatever they have to get advantage over the others,” he said.

While attributing security challenges confronting Nigeria to poverty, Duke called for the decentralisation of security architecture in order to make it more effective.

“It’s only recently that they created more divisions, right? But you notice something in the United States, they have what they call the National Guard, which is military and it is in every state.

“So, it’s really like having a division in every state. So, they have really decentralised security.

“I will say something here for free. Anything that is essential must be local.

“Security is essential, so you have to localise it because 80% of security is intelligence. You can’t be in Sokoto and want to know what is happening in Calabar,” he said.