•Urges PDP to ensure justice, fairness
•Former Anambra governor is very competent, capable to lead Nigeria, says Bode George
Onyebuchi Ezigbo
Former Governor of Anambra State and one of the presidential aspirants of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Mr. Peter Obi has promised to live up to his oath of office in the discharge of duties if chosen to lead the country.
Obi said while he was well disposed to the moves for a consensus presidential candidate in the PDP, he would like his party and Nigerians to ensure that fairness, justice and respect prevailed.
Obi who spoke on his plans to secure the PDP presidential ticket on, ‘The Morning Show,” monitored on Arise News Channel yesterday, said he would pursue an aggressive economic policy that would give priority to funding of small and medium scale businesses, improve power supply and tackle insecurity by pulling large numbers of citizens out of poverty.
In addition, he said he would tackle corruption by ensuring that public officers do not violate the constitution or betray the confidence and trust placed on them by Nigerians.
He also said if granted opportunity to lead the country, no agency of government would be allowed to spend on non-productive venture.
When asked what he will do to address economic challenges, Obi said he would properly fund and support small and medium scale businesses to help provide jobs and put food on the tables of millions of Nigerians.
“The country is not productive and what the country is producing today is poverty which you know yourself. It is a very simple thing; from 2020 till today your growth rate is on the average of 2.1 per cent.
“In the last five years it’s an average of 1.5 per cent. You can see it from the level of unemployment even in the past five years. In 2015, 61 million Nigerians were employed today it’s only about 36 million, when the actual rate of the percentage of people who are supposed to be working in Nigeria is 120 million, because we have 200 million population and 50 per cent of your population is supposed to be productive, so we are not progressing.
“The fact is that you need to properly fund and support more small and medium scale businesses which can be done easily. You need to aggressively empower and support women in this sector. I went to the villages in Bangladesh, today Bangladesh is exporting 37 billion – 40 billion worth of textiles.
“Over six million workers in this sector, 80 per cent of them are women in the villages having small textile companies being exported all over the world, ” he said.
Again, Obi faulted the level of support by banks to businesses in the country.
“If you look at our lending today, our total bank lending is about N30 trillion; only about five per cent which is N1.5 trillion goes to MSME and that is even not true. I can tell you it is below that. No country would survive with that, you need at least 20 to 30 per cent,” he said
Going down memory lane, Obi said Nigeria started on a very good footing after independence but later derailed.
According to Obi, the founding fathers of Nigeria had very lofty ideas on how the country would make progress, but poor leadership got the country where it is today.
For instance, he recalled that the first loan ever requested by this country was in June 1964 by Tafa Balewa from the World Bank, which was $82 million to build Kanji dam and to produce 760 megawatts.
“Imagine we do that on a sustainable basis, against the trajectory today. Imagine where we would be. Even if you read the World Bank reply to him, they said, ‘you are ambitions and right thinking, we would stimulate the economy of your country.’ That’s the way our fathers started,” Obi said.
Furthermore, Obi spoke on what should be the criteria for choosing the next president, saying Nigerians should interrogate the person’s integrity and past endeavours.
“You should come out and tell us how you are going to solve these things and what you are going to offer Nigerians and for you who are journalists, you should investigate thoroughly the person’s past, where is he coming from, what was he doing on the past.
“If he is now sharing money, where did he get the money from? How rich was he before? I have listened to one of the shows you did with Dele Momodu and he said 25 years ago he was trying to start Ovation Magazine.
“I had £26,000 pounds and I had to go to bank in England to borrow £150,000 and they turned it down because they said it won’t work. But because I was determined I went on and this is where I am today. When I listened to that interview immediately I went into my system and looked at where I was 25 years ago.
“That is what I want you to interrogate. What is the person going to offer? Is he going to solve this problem?
In what looked like veiled reference to the response by former Governor of Lagos state and a presidential aspirant of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Ahmed Bola Tinubu to the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo’s declaration of presidential ambition, Obi said no one should assume monopoly and competence on how to solve the country’s problems.
“Let it be issue-based campaign not personality. What we want is someone who will solve this problem now. Even if it is a toddler, let him come out. Jesus was virtually a toddler when he started his missionary work and he was able to solve a lot of problems and people were following him. So, if the problem is going to be solved by a toddler, let’s follow the toddler,” he said.
On the recent move by presidential aspirants from the South-east to work out some form of consensus, Obi said the aspirants agreed to, “sit down with our other counterparts from other regions to discuss about how reach an understanding based on fairness, justice and respect.”
He added: “We agreed to work together for the interest of Nigeria, for the growth and future of Nigeria. This is not time to quarrel with each other, this is a time to build a relationship.
“So we agreed to work together to ensure that whatever happens in this exercise must be based on fairness, equity and respect.”
On whether he was open to dialogue with his northern counterparts to produce a consensus candidate for the PDP presidential ticket, Obi said: “If you have a diverse and multi-ethnic country like Nigeria you must do things with fairness, justice and equity and that is why our constitution talks about national character, making sure that whatever it is goes round every region. So, for us in the south-east, we believe we should be given a chance and I always say this, it is when we are given a chance that people would see a different Nigeria. So, we are working together.
“I have already said we are going to sit down with our other counterparts from other regions to discuss and what we are going to do is to ensure whatever we do, consensus or not, must be based on fairness, justice, respect, love and commitment to a better Nigeria which can only stand from this foundation we have laid that everybody is included,” he said.
The former Anambra state governor also spoke on rhe country’s loan burden which he said
Meanwhile, Elder statesman and former Deputy National Chairman of the PDP, Chief Olabode George, has said Obi is competent, capable, possesses integrity, sound character and has all it takes to serve Nigeria at the highest level.
George made this known when Obi visited stakeholders and executives of the PDP in Lagos State, in furtherance to his presidential aspiration.
He explained that people like Obi who have been tested and proven competent in the corporate and public sectors should be given the chance to salvage Nigeria from further failure.
His words: “I knew Peter Obi even before he became governor. He has a firm background of entrepreneurship, expert knowledge of finance and economy, and sound record of public service, considering what he did in Anambra State.
“Nigeria definitely needs a capable leader like Peter Obi to rescue it from the myriad of challenges it is contending with. I urge Nigerians to support him and give him the chance to fix our nation.”
In his reaction, Obi pledged he would continue to contribute to building a better nation for all. He lamented the astronomically high level of insecurity in the nation. He urged Nigerians to make the right decisions in 2023 to avoid losing the country to criminal elements, bent on overrunning the entire country.
