Obi: I’m Not Desperate For Power
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A former governor of Anambra State and presidential hopeful on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Mr Peter Obi, has said he is not desperate to be president but eager to see Nigeria work.
The former vice presidential candidate of the PDP in 2019 stated this on Wednesday when he paid a courtesy visit to Bayelsa State governor, Senator Douye Diri at the Government House, Yenagoa.
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Obi said Nigeria was a great country with untapped potentialities, noting that he is desperate to move the nation away from a consumption economy to a productive one.
He stressed that Nigeria was not working because of its unproductive state, which he said was unacceptable to the nation’s young, intelligent and smart population.
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The presidential hopeful, who reeled out the statistics of agricultural value chain to Nigeria’s economy as against oil revenue, decried the level of neglect of food production in the country.
Obi asserted that if elected Nigeria’s president, he would end the current oil revenue sharing formula and introduce a production formula, particularly in agriculture and ICT.
He said the $18bn Nigeria gets from oil monthly cannot be compared to Facebook or Twitter, which was just sold for $44bn.
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His words: “I am aspiring to lead this country. For me, it is not a desperate aspiration but I am desperate to see Nigeria work.
“This is a great country and I have a simple thing to do. I want to move it from consumption to a productive country. It is not working because it is not a productive country.
“We cannot see our children, millions of young people that are smart and intelligent stay at home doing nothing and we keep quiet.
“I was in Niger State with 76,363sq km of land but the people cannot feed themselves and Nigeria. They are also exporting nothing.
“Whereas Netherlands is 33,100sq km of land, they are exporting agricultural materials of $120bn while we earn only $18bn from oil.
“All we do here is sharing formula. I want to stop it. We must have production formula. Let the people produce the oil and keep it. There are so many things people can do.”
Obi also condemned the incessant borrowing under the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led federal government, saying that in four years, the country had borrowed almost $100bn with nothing to show for it.
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The presidential aspirant promised to change the country’s debt profile and lambasted the government at the centre for making excuses why Nigeria cannot work.
In his remarks, Diri said Obi proved his worth while he served as governor of Anambra, especially when he saved and handed over N75bn to his successor.
Diri said Nigeria needed well-equipped and knowledgeable people like Obi to rescue the country from those who have failed to fix it.
