By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Presidential flag bearer of the Labour Party for the 2023 polls, Peter Obi, has stated that Nigeria is on the verge of collapse.
Speaking in an interview with CNN’s Zane Asher on Friday, Obi said the level of insecurity in Nigeria is high, which makes it difficult for people to invest in the country.
He continued by stating that voting people based on ethnicity, religion, and connections contributed to Nigeria’s current state.
“Nigeria is now not just in a physical mess, it is at the last stage to collapse. The people in the North don’t have a secure place, good roads, they don’t buy bread cheaper than people in the South, so the people in the South,” he added.
He pointed out that the cost of governance within the structure of the Nigerian Government be reduced to create resources that will be deployed to other critical areas of production.
Obi went back memory lane during his tenure as Anambra State Governor, insisting that he has a good track record for which he should be trusted to keep his promises in taking Nigeria out of its present situation.
“What people need to do is to go and look at what I promised as a state governor. When I say I’m going to turn around education, health, pull people out of poverty, bring sanity and civility in governance in Anambra State, whether that happened or not. When I say we are going to save money, did we do that,” he said.
When asked how he intends to rally support from the Northern part of the country in actualising his presidential ambition, he said Nigeria must move away from the practice of electing leaders based on mundane considerations apart from competence and character.
“We have been able to elect people based on ethnicity, religion, my turn, connection, or one form of bias or the other which brought us to where we are, or structure, which I always sat, structure of criminality, that is what we want to dismantle now.
“And ensure that next election is based on character, capacity, competence, commitment to do the right thing. Nigeria is now not just in a physical mess, the people in the North don’t have a secured place, they don’t have good roads, they don’t buy bread cheaper than people in the South, so is people in the South.
“So when you hear about religion, ethnicity, connection, my turn, it is a conspiracy to keep Nigeria under-developed, now we’ve reached the end, we can no longer continue this way,” he added.
On his plan to take Nigeria’s economy out of “life support”, Obi emphasised that there in urgent need to deal with the issue of security decisively which he says impacts the economy negatively.
When tackled on farmer/herder crisis, he said will return to farm and ensure that the vast arable land of the North are cultivated to pull citizens out of poverty.
Obi, 61, enjoys the support of young Nigerians who believe their dream nation is yet to be achieved. In recent weeks, his supporters have staged solidarity march across various states of the country, apparently to counter the claim of the opposition that Obi has no structure to win presidential election.
He dumped his former party-the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), following his failure to secure the party’s presidential ticket and joined Labour Party where he has mustered a large network of supporters.
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