By Tom Okpe
Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party, (LP) in the February 25th general election, Peter Obi has predicted that there will be a country, in reaction to the saying of the literary sage, Prof Chinua Achebe in one of his novels, ‘There Was a Country’.
He noted that if Chinua Achebe was to come to Nigeria today, he would weep bitterly for his country as comparatively, there was really no trouble with Nigeria, four decades ago when the iroko of literature, Achebe wrote the book, ‘The Trouble With Nigeria.’
“If Achebe was alive, he would have taken back the book. When he wrote it, there was no trouble. Now, there is real trouble in Nigeria.”
Addressing the audience inside the Arthur Lewis Auditorium, venue of the occasion, The Chinua Achebe International Symposium and 10th Anniversary Memorial Celebration organized by the ‘Chinua Achebe Foundation and African World Initiative’ anchored by the very able Professor Chika Okeke-Agulu, Director Programme in African Studies, Princeton University, New Jersey, United States, the former governor of Anambra State characteristically drew factual comparisons to drive home, fact that though Achebe was spot on in identifying Nigeria’s troubles as leadership-induced.
According toTai Emeka Obasi, P A Media to Obi in a statement, the globally celebrated writer of ‘Things Fall Apart’ would weep bitterly today if he came back to observe how far his dear country had deteriorated after 40 years of his warning for positive change.
Obi described Achebe, who incidentally taught him the English Language in his first year at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, as a man whose works defined him as one imbued with communal awareness to put in great efforts to better the society.
Mentioning Achebe’s protagonists in his books, from Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart, through those of Arrow of God, Man Of The People, the LP standard bearer impressively summarised the characters in the books as sacrificing whatever it took, including their lives, to better the lots of their people.
Obi in the usual way of buttressing his position with statistics, recalled that, “40 years ago, University professors in Nigeria earned a monthly salary of N1,200 when the Naira exchanged at about $1.6, So, that was about $2,000.
“Then, brand new popular Corolla vehicles and Peugeot cars sold at between N4000 and N5000.
“It meant that any University professor could decide to save his three months’ salary to purchase a brand new of those brands of car.
“Today, such brands cost as much as N38 million and the same professors earn N400,000 per month. It will take the same professor eight years of saving every dime earned to be able to purchase the same brand of vehicle.
“Forty years ago, a million Naira was valued at $1.6 million. Today same amount is valued at just $1000, though our great father, Achebe would weep at the realities today, he was very right about leadership being the issue.
“Our country has been bedeviled by corruption. Stealing public money has left us where we are today.
“People say that fighting corruption is not easy but it is very easy. If you are in charge and you are not stealing, your wife is not stealing, your children are not stealing, those working with you will not have any reason to steal and you must have reduced corruption by over 50 percent.”
Furthermore, he stressed that “We can start thinking of a new Nigeria with competence, and capacity that is committed to fighting corruption.
“Is it possible to fight corruption? The answer is yes,” Obi noted.
Obi recalled how as governor, he met a state that was ranked 27th out of the 36 states of Nigeria in Education but that with conceited efforts through handing schools over to missions and pumping funds into the sector to ensure every conducive atmosphere of learning, his state moved from that position to first and retained that position, until he left office.
He also recalled how his administration cleared over N35 billion backlog of pensions and gratuities he inherited and never owed salaries, pensions, gratuities, and contractors and still left behind over N75 billion before vacating office.
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He clearly, emphasised that with leaders of proven integrity, capacity, and competence, Nigeria would come out of her trouble.
Obi regretted that Achebe was left with the lamentation of a failed nation clearly expressed, in his last book, ‘There Was A Country.’
“So painful, but I like to assure us Nigerians that, ‘There Will Be A Country.’ A country where leaders will be who they claim to be.
“A country where leaders will be of known identities, known parentage, where schools they claimed to have attended and certificates obtained would be accurately verified,” he added.
