The presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), in the February 25, 2023, general elections, Mr Peter Obi, on Thursday that the policy of the present administration to lift a substantial number of Nigerians out of poverty would remain a ruse if the country remained a consuming country rather than a producing nation.
Besides, the former two-term governor of Anambra State added that to also get out of the present economic predicament, Nigerians must ensure that it is difficult for those in authority to steal public funds, positing that majority of the people were complicit in that regard as the people remained the ones celebrating those who were fleecing the economy.
Mr. Obi spoke in Beni at the Colloquium and Hall of Fame organised by Edo Policy Roundtable in conjunction with a private university, Mudiame University, Irrua, in Esan Central Local Government Area of the state, in honour of the National Chairman of LP, Mr. Julius Abure, at the Bishop Kelly Pastoral Centre, Benin City. The theme of the colloquium is: “The Contemporary Nigerian Politics: The Way Forward for Edo State”.
According to him, God endowed the country with the best of weather, the best of natural resources, the best of human resources, and the best of people, adding that the only shortfall in the endowments was that God did not give Nigeria good leadership.
He submitted further that with the natural and human resources abundant in Nigeria the country had no reason to be poor, but poor leadership, lack of direction, poor planning and bad implementation of policies.
According to him, “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.
“All I can tell anybody, 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 good leadership, if we have good leaders we would do better”, he added.
Obi lamented that while Nigeria towered above the three European nations of Germany, France and United Kingdom (UK), combined in terms of population and landmass, regrettably, the three countries were above Nigeria by 25 percent in the area of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) because of poor leadership and poor consumption without production.
“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 compare them with Nigeria in land size, they are just about 20 percent bigger than Nigeria when you put three together. But today 357,0000 Germany and France 551,000 and the 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 the population, the UK is about 67 million, France is about 64 million, Germany is about 84 million and three of them out together are 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 economies, if you put the economies of the three of them together, Germany has a GDP of 4.4 trillion, the UK has a GDP of 3.2 trillion, and France has a GDP of about 303.2 trillion. You are getting about 10 trillion in economy, and we are about 400, so they are 25 times more.
“Why? We have leadership that is involved in waste and consumption, not production. So, whenever you are talking about pulling people out of poverty and creating jobs for them, it is simple: just remove the economy from consumption to production, and you create jobs. But now all we are thinking about is to buy this and buy that, consume this and consume that, and organise this ceremony and that ceremony; it will not work”, Obi submitted.
He called on the resource persons at the Roundtable to make recommendations that would lift Edo State and the country as a whole out of its present predicament, just as he asked Nigerians to stop celebrating those who were responsible for their woes, assuring that if Nigeria was better managed, those who had jetted out of the country to seek greener pastures somewhere else would come back to develop the country.
“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 will have a better Nigeria. Now that you have announced a round table, let’s have a round table for Nigeria and everybody, and rest assured that if we get this right, we will have a better Nigeria. We must stop people from stealing public money; we must stop people from wasting public money; it is not their private money, and all of us are involved; we must not celebrate them.
“Let us join together in rebuilding Nigeria. We must bequeath a better Nigeria to our children. We cannot bequeath Nigeria as it is today; we are going to bequeath anarchy to them, suffering, and when you wake up in the morning, all you are hearing is killing”, the LP presidential candidate warned.
On his part, the Guest Speaker, Dr. Yunusa Tanko, noted that Nigeria, at 63, was still searching for a new political order, adding that the full realisation of the country’s dream of independence had been made impossible because of the dominance of the factors of ethnicity, religion, and politics, which he argued have also affected the survival of democratic rule and national development.
He praised Abure for making his mark by midwifing the Labour Party to an unbelievable success from the build-up of strong founding leaders like Chief Dan Nwanyanwu and the late Alhaji Abdulkadir Abdulsalam.
In his speech, the National Chairman of the Labour Party, Julius Abure, said the September 2, 2024, Edo governorship election would afford the people of the state the opportunity to elect the right governor, whom he termed “Shepherd Governor”, who he said would be a bridge-builder and must be selfless and ready to take risks and make personal sacrifices at all times in the interest and well-being of Edo people.
He stressed that such a governor must have the capacity to bring all shades of persons together in order to achieve the objectives of developing the state and must have innovative ideas and openness to harness the state resources to create for the state.
The LP National Chairman assured that the Labour Governor would be interested in wealth creation and poverty eradication, security, local government administration, education, health, and infrastructural development.
Earlier, the Chancellor of Mudiame University, Professor S.E. Eromosele, noted that the situation in Edo State was dire, with poverty, hardship, and backwardness exacerbating the dependency ratio.
He, therefore, called for a government that drove people-oriented policies, adding that citizens deserved to be integral to the policy-making process.
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