The candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the February 25 Presidential election, Mr Peter Obi, on Thursday, said there was nothing wrong with Nigeria as God has blessed the country with all the good things of life, but that the problem of the country is lack of planning and good leadership.
He disclosed this in Benin City, Edo State at a Colloquium and Hall of Fame organized in honour of the National Chairman of Labour Party (LP), Julius Abure with the theme: “The Contemporary Nigerian Politics: The Way Forward for Edo State”.
Obi also eulogized the Labour Party National Chairman, saying “Before I joined Labour Party, I told Julius Abure that I was told that people have told me that you and your leadership are going to allow the primary to be free and fair and since then our relationship has been on that basis.
“I like to celebrate people when they are doing something good and I thank you for celebrating him. We all have our problems, I am not a saint and I am not a criminal, I have never knowingly done anything wrong, if I knew it was wrong I wouldn’t do it.
“I have served in the state, I have served in the private sector and today we are going through difficulties, we are not here to mention names, I just listened to a very wonderful speech when they were talking about planning, if you have not planned, you plan to fail and it is very simple.
“The reason why the country is filling today is lack of plan, and when you talk about lack of planning, you are talking about lack of implementation because we politicians, when we are campaigning, everything is sweet and good but once we have the opportunity, we would bring out our true side and start doing the opposite and reserved our pride for implementation.
“The keynote speaker talked about the country, mine is a goodwill message, those who have spoken to us and those who will still speak today in this round table policy, try to find out how we can have a better Nigeria, if we have a better Edo State, we would have a better Nigeria.
“All I can tell anybody is there is nothing wrong with Nigeria, Nigeria has one of the best in terms of land, weather, God-given resources and the people.
“One thing God has not given Nigeria is leadership, if we have a good leader we will do better. A country like Nigeria has no reason to be poor if not because of leadership if you compare Nigeria with the three biggest economies in Europe- Germany, Britain and France, these three countries if you compared them with Nigeria in land size, they are just about 20 per cent bigger than Nigeria when you put the three together.
“But today 357,0000 Germany and France 551,000 and UK 373,000 and if you put them together you have about 1162, square kilometres and Nigeria is 923,000 square kilometres.
“If you talk about population UK is about 67 million, France is about 64 million, Germany is about 84 million and three of them put together is 316 million and Nigeria is about 216 million and I can tell you that we have more resourceful people, youths than the three of them have.
“But when you now compare our economy, if you put the economy of the three of them together Germany is GDP of $4.4 trillion, UK GDP of $3.2 trillion, France is about $303.2 trillion and you are getting about about 10 trillion economy and We are about $400 billion, so they are 25 time more.
“Why because we have leadership that is involved in waste and consumption and no production, so whenever you are talking of pulling the people out of poverty and creating jobs for the people, it is simple, just remove the economy from consumption to production, you create jobs.
“But now all we are thinking about is to buy this and buy that, consume this and consume that, organise this ceremony and that ceremony, it will not work.
“Now, you have announced a round table, let’s have a round table for Nigeria and everybody and be rest assured that if we get this right we would have a better Nigeria.
