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| Amb. Toyo (second from left) |
Her Excellency Ambassador Nkoyo Toyo Esq has given insights into what her priority will be should she eventually be elected as governor come 2023.
The governance, development and policy expert disclosed that her public priority will be the economy especially the informal sector where we have a larger chunk of Nigerians and Cross Riverians.
She said this last week when she met with Nigerian youth from Cross River Northern Senatorial District under the aegis of National Youth Council of Nigeria, NYCN prior to their state convention.
She observed that politics alone cannot solve the problems of the state but, the economy.
Her words, ‘...But, I think above all, is that, how are we going to reactivate the economy. Because, honestly, if we do not change the nature of the economy, politics alone cannot solve the problem.
‘If politics was able to solve the problem, I think we can commend the Ayade government for all the employment that he has given to young people. But, still look at it, in a state where you have almost 4 million people, he says he has given about 6,000 appointments, if it is true that he has given 6,000 people appointments out of 4 million people, you can imagine the number of people still looking for something to do. So, you must look for something that is more than appointments. Appointment cannot solve the problems of the State.
‘If out of approximately 4 million people, given the projections of our population as at 2023, I think those in formal employment and appointment plus teachers, nurses, others cannot be more than 200,000; it means that we still have about 3 point something million that are in the informal sector, that are working outside the formal environment.
‘And that is where our economy needs to be driven, it needs to be driven where the people are, and not spending the bulk of our money on the few that are in the formal sector. We need to shift some of the grounds, as much as we want to keep some of those appointments, as much as we want to keep the civil service going, we must also create new places where power is being shifted, and where new forces are driving the economy of the state and making it work’, Toyo noted.
The former diplomat noted that should we address the economic challenge from the bottom up approach, criminality and the like will be drastically reduced: ‘When more people have something to eat, criminality will reduce, and many other things will reduce as well.
‘That is why I believe, going forward, what must take particular attention in our country and in our state is diversification of the economy, we need to do something that will trickle down to the bottom, and get the economy working again and reactivate it for the future, I will be paying lot of the attention if I become governor on how we do the local and very basic economy.’
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