Governor Isa Yuguda of Bauchi State said Nigeria has made huge progress in the last 54 years in spite of daunting challenges, echoing President Goodluck Jonathan’s independence anniversary statement that Nigeria was marching to progress.

Yuguda told State House correspondents that the country had witnessed tremendous transformation in polity, economy, transportation, communications and other sectors.

Governor Isa Yuguda

He said; “at 54, Nigeria as a country has witnessed a lot of transformation and for somebody who has seen the last 50 years, I can boldly tell you this.

“In terms of the polity, economy and other sectors especially transportation, communications and a host of others, we have fared well as a nation.

“In the 60’s, we had not more than three or four universities, but today, how many universities are we talking about?.

“Fifty-four years ago, how many road networks did we have in Nigeria. We can now see that road networks, airports have been developed across the country.

“We can say we are on the right track and we believe that the stage has been set for the country to be a developed country.’’

Yuguda said several years of military intervention and the current security challenges had slowed the country’s development.

The governor explained that the country had also witnessed challenges in the area of policy and programme implementation since independence.

“Politically, we have had a lot of military interventions in the last 54 years which made it difficult for us to deepen our democracy.

“But gladly, we have had 15 years of uninterrupted democracy and we are now beginning to see democracy taking firm root in the country.

“For the other sectors, sadly, we have also had some challenges. Economically, we have challenges when it comes to implementation of our development programmes.

“Besides, we have seen some of those interventions which made it impossible for us to implement development programmes.’’

He, however, said that the country could have done better in operating the structure that would
fight corruption in the system.

He said “it was between 2006 and 2007 that some of these institutions that fight corruption were put in place.’’

Yuguda said that the infrastructure to effectively harness the country’s huge agricultural resources was not in place until recently.

According to him, many river basins in the country are either mismanaged or abandoned, thereby making their survival impossible.

The governor said that the country would surely get to its promised land if the current tempo of development was sustained