A Renown labour activist, Comrade Issa Aremu on Sunday cautioned former Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo state against taking the N200m residential building approved for him by the state’s legislature.
He also advised President Muhammadu Buhari against obtaining the proposed $30billion loan.
Aremu who is also the World Vice Chairman, Global Industrial Union, urged Nigerian leaders to emulate
the late Cuban former President Fidel Castrol’s exemplary leadership qualities.
He said while Buhari is doing well in tackling corruption, he should
learn from Cuba and avoid the pitfalls of indebtedness.
Aremu spoke during a media chat with newsmen in Ilorin, Kwara state,where he extolled the virtues of Fidel Castro.
He said that Africa has lost a genuine Latin- African friend,noting that Castrol was always willing to support African nations whenever the need arose.
On the Edo state life pension for former governors and deputy governors, Aremu asked Oshiomhole to make a positive difference by not collecting the life pension benefit as approved by the state Assembly.
“Edo’s governnace -report since 2008 points to Nigeria’s renewed optimism. Indeed we have witnessed a renaissance which defeats the old pessimism according to which nothing would work.
“Edo state within a short time became one huge reconstruction site in governance! Many things went on simultaneously; from massive rural and urban reconstructions to public schools reinventions, from innovated sporting facilities (remaking of Ogbemudia Stadium) to new public transportation (comrade Buses), from maternal and child care to record mass public employment in record time, from multiple assault on insecurity to mass beautification of the ancient city of Benin, to massive water project, from mass job creation through public works to prompt payment of salaries, including 25per cent increase in minimum wage above the statutory N18,000”. he noted.
On the proposed $30 billion loan, the labour leader said “President Buhari must heed Fidel’s advice on the danger of indiscriminate loans and credits.
“Fidel Castro had long promoted in his decade-long battle of developmental ideas made a case for self reliance. He had compared the debt burden “to that torment in Greek mythology in which a man is doomed to push a large stone uphill for all eternity, a stone that always rolls down again before reaching the top.” “Debtors, he maintained “don’t need new loans”.
Fidel has since been proven right that most debts were “unpayable and uncollectible”.
“We must credit the series of debt cancellation of the two decades to audacious alternative views of Fidel Castro, not the astuteness of “negotiators” and so called altruism of creditors.
“The world has wisely shifted to Cuban development paradigm after the scandalous market collapse of 2007 without acknowledging Fidel and Cubans who promoted the role of the state and governance in development.
“Cuba has the lowest HIV prevalent rate, thanks to education and non-commercialization of the battle against the scourge. Cuba ranks high on UN development index, much to its nurtured human capital through quality literacy and good health. In fact Cuba shows that the real “resource control” should start with human capital”.
