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•Says he’s not desperate to be president
From Aidoghie Paulinus and Okwe Obi, Abuja
The 2023 presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) and former governor of Anambra State, Mr. Peter Obi, has said Nigeria is at a critical juncture.
Mr. Obi, who spoke at the All Nigeria Editors Conference (ANEC) in Abuja, restated that he was not desperate to become the president of Nigeria.
“For me as a politician, my only legal suggestion and contribution is that we know where we are now; our country is at a critical juncture that nobody needs to tell you people whether things are going right or not.”
Obi recalled his conversation earlier where he told someone that in the past weeks, Nigeria had been in a position where the President of the United States, Donald Trump, made a statement and in the critical tweet, the issue of genocide and killings were mentioned.
He said instead of looking at the stark reality, leaders of Nigeria were busy debating the killings in the country.
“Are there killings? Yes. We spent time debating whether it is genocide or not. What I think we should have said together, accept the stark reality that there is killing and find how we can organise diplomatically and everything, how we can be helped.”
Obi also said what was important in the tweet was the second line which said “now disgraced country.”
He added there was the need for Nigerians to look inward whether the country is a disgraced country or not.
“So, somebody asked me that question. He said – now a disgraced country. I said, what are you talking about? Now a disgraced country. What is wrong with you? Why is it that anytime people make comments, instead of looking inward, we are looking the other way round?”
He lamented that Nigeria is a country with the highest number of poor people living in one country – over 130 million.
Obi added that the two most populous countries in the world, India and China, when put together, are nearly three billion, saying Nigeria had more people living in poverty than the two of them combined.
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“And you are worried that somebody called you now disgraced. Why don’t you look back and know whether there is anything that is causing you disgrace behind you?”
Obi maintained that there is no other country in the world, except Nigeria that you can find 20 million out-of-school children, wondering why someone should be worried that Nigeria was referred to as a disgraced country.
He added that Nigeria had overtaken India, which is seven times its population in terms of infant mortality.
Obi further said Nigeria was one of the hungriest countries in the world to the extent that even Ukraine, a country at war, “dash you grain to fight hunger” and someone would be worried that Nigeria was referred to as a disgraced country.
“Why don’t you look back whether there is a disgrace behind you that you can deal with,” he reiterated.
He told the editors that they had all that was required to begin to get politicians to start thinking differently.
“It is not as if we don’t take steps that are… Yes, there might be steps we have taken that are good, nobody is saying that everything is bad.
“For example, we removed subsidy. That is a good decision. We have unified the currency, that is a good decision.”
He, however, said why the decisions were not working for the country was that you cannot tell people to fast while you are feasting.
“You need to deal with executive rascality of expenditure before your monetary policies can work. To deal with corruption, you need to deal with the issue of the cost of running government.”
Obi cited the Mayor of New York, United States, who is between 36 and 40 years and worth about $200,000, but running a city with a budget of about $115 billion, three times Nigerian budget, yet if he is seen with two vehicles on the road, he was sure he would not be mayor the next day.
