The Presidential Candidate of Labour Party, Mr Peter Obi, has identified elite gang up, transactional governance and fiscal rascality on the part of the government, among others, as the factors that have been holding Nigeria captive over the years.
Obi stated this while fielding questions from the audience – physical and virtual, at the Chatham House, an independent policy institute, in London yesterday where he was guest. He assured he would dismantle all these factors as they are breeding ground for corruption.
According to him, many Nigerian leaders engage in transactional governance where they govern with the mindset of what should benefit them, their family members and associates. But leaders who stay away from this would have the moral justification to genuinely fight corruption and other anomalies.
He cited example of his eight years tenure as governor of Anambra State where he signed allocation of land that ran into tens of hundreds without allocating any to himself or family member.
He said: “There will be no sacred cow” under the Obi-Datti administration. Our objective is to dismantle these structures of criminality and enthrone competence, character, and capability so that talents and ideas can flourish.”
On how he intends to cope with possibly having a National Assembly dominated by members of opposition parties, Obi said he had such experience as Governor of Anambra State when none of the 30 members of the State of Assembly came from his political party, adding that what he needed to do is just do the right thing, avoid nepotism and transactional governance because even the legislators need good governance and secured and peaceful Nigeria.
On how he will tackle the problem of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Obi said he would sit with all agitators not just IPOB and the Yoruba Nation, noting that such agitation arose because of feelings of inequity, lack of justice, marginalization, among others.
“We will look into the issue of justice and marginalization which are some of the reasons for agitation. We are going to apply the carrot and stick in dealing with the agitators.
On attraction of investment into Nigeria, Obi said, he will create enabling environment where rule of law thrives and sanctity of contract respected and honoured, and avoid transactional policies that breed corruption and weakens governance.
On security, he said it will be his top priority because everything will be done to secure the environment and he will do this by first turning the country into production and pulling people out of poverty and adequately utilizing our military.
“Our military once secured Africa and they should secure Nigeria and we will provide the needed leadership and political will.”
On the independence of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), he said what is happening in the apex bank now – foreign exchange challenge and falling of value of naira is not necessarily question of competence of the governor but as a result of fiscal rascality of the government, adding that as long as this rascality is continuing, there will be these challenges. He assured that regime will ensure independence of the Central Bank and the fiscal rascality in the system will be dismantled while order and discipline will be injected into the country’s monetary policies.
On the question of power problem asked by a Nigerian UK based solicitor who attributed Nigeria’s power issue to importation of generators by the ‘big boys.’ She said the big boys hold the power sector to ransom and have prevented it from working. Obi said such structure is what his regime will dismantle regretting that Nigeria with a population of 200 million has between 5 and 6 megawatts (MW) of electricity while South Africa with less than a hundred million people has over 45,000 MW and yet suffers from power crisis. Imagine what Nigerians are going through. He promised to surmount the problem as there will be no sacred cow.
Other questions he answered were in the areas of health and education sectors where he lamented the poor budgetary allocations every year to the sectors while fuel subsidy allocations are higher and given priority. He noted that these corrupt structures will be dismantled.
On debt and borrowing, Obi said there is nothing wrong in country borrowing money. He said big countries such as America, United Kingdom, Japan and China, among others borrow but what makes Nigeria’s borrowing abnormal is that it borrows to service consumption as against production in other countries cited above. It is because of this that per capita income fell from $2,500 in 2015 to $2000 currently.
According to Alex Vine who is in charge of African Programme at Chatham House, millions of people watched the programme from across the world.
The Obi-Datti Media office also reported that millions of people within and outside the country followed the programme via social media and 99 per cent of the comment’s eulogized the Candidate for his fantastic outing.
Obi also proved fit for the office he is running for by standing throughout the programme from his presentation all the way to question and answer section which was close to two hours.
