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By Sunday Ani
Presidential candidate of Labour Party (LP), Mr. Peter Obi has reassured Nigerians that his ambition in 2023 is to ensure that Nigerians take back their country.
Obi who made the pledge on Wednesday while speaking on Arise Television bared his mind on various issues including restructuring, state police, port operations and alleged support by Former President Olusegun Obasanjo among other issues.
His thoughts on Nigeria’s potential
…..There is vast land in the North. Kano and Kaduna should be processing centres, where we are moving goods for export trade. If you travel from Rabat to the Tangen seaport in Morocco, all you see are farmlands. If you are on air landing from anywhere, all you see are farmlands. In Nigeria, you see vast lands and people who are looking for food. These people can be moved from point A to B and be supported by allowing critical policies that help. If you generate power, you move more people out of poverty. What power can do to an economy is immeasurable. If you have power, you have small businesses springing up everywhere; small productions that can help. Everywhere in the world, 60 to 70 percent of both employment and economy are dependent on small business except here in Nigeria because they have collapsed. Nobody is supporting them; they don’t have the power. Even the big corporations are having the issue of power. So, we are not doing anything; we are not exporting enough and because of it, we don’t have foreign exchange even to service our debts. There is no reason Nigeria should not be exporting at least N300 billion worth of goods. I have said it before that Vietnam with a quarter of our land, 330,000 sq km of land; half of our population of 100 million people had as its total export last year $312 billion, and they were all manufactured goods – electronics (over $60b), clothing ($32b), footwear ($23b) and we are earning $16 billion from oil. Footwear that you can do everywhere, in Onitsha, Aba and Kano is what is giving so much money to Vietnam in export. Kano used to be a manufacturing centre but today, all the manufacturing companies in Kano are complaining. I visited the biggest rice processing plant in Kano last year because I had to support them and that is why I am saying that all this noise about East, West or North is unnecessary. I visited the plant and we are supporting the owner financially because he is doing the right thing. That is what we should be talking about, not who is from the low ladder or the higher ladder. If the man from the low ladder can do the job, let us bring him to do the job so we can solve this problem because that is what we need.
When are we going to see your manifesto?
You are going to see it. Britain till today operates an unwritten constitution. Let us look at the man who is saying this and who is writing all this; I can hire professors from the university and they write something that I don’t believe in or something that doesn’t even make sense to me. I am saying that you should go and look at my records. Whatever I told you, I have experimented in the private and public sectors. So, there is enough proof to what I am saying I will do.
What specifically would you do to turn around the port operation in Nigeria?
Concerning the issue of ports, I am a trader and I know the enormous costs. If you borrow money today and say you are going to do importation from the United Kingdom (UK) to Nigeria; you borrow money at 20 percent; let us say you borrow N10 million, so you are going to pay N2 million at the end of one year. First is that you will not find a Dollar and if you find it, you import goods, you pay for it and from the UK, it takes two weeks to come to Nigeria and it takes you three months to clear in Nigeria port. So, you are paying interest for three months on your N2 million for nothing; we can change it. You clear goods in Cotonou in three days. I am just putting three days because you can even do it in one day; you do it the same way in Ghana and even in Ivory Coast. I have been involved with ports. I have actually been a part of the probe in the port. I have actually travelled to Singapore and other countries because of the ports to see what works in other climes.
What will you do to make it like Ghana and Cotonou?
Very simple; it is a human factor and I will deal with it. It is a human factor; quote me anywhere. What they do there is not different from what we do here; all we need to do is to handle the human factor. I tell people what we did with education in Anambra State; we moved from number 26 to number one and we didn’t change the teachers. We didn’t hire new people. It was the same teachers. When they saw the body language of the leader, what he wanted and people were being asked to go if they didn’t deliver, they delivered it. Everything you see in Nigeria that has not worked, whether it is scanning or what have you, we will deal with it decisively.
People say it might have been easy in Anambra but it will not be easy with Nigeria as a whole, what do you say to that?
It will be the same thing, exactly the same thing; quote me anywhere. I have been in the banking industry. Go and check; we took the smallest bank and became 25 billion bank. I was a chairman; go and check my record. I have been a successful businessman. Let me tell you, Anambra is a very difficult state; in fact the most difficult state to govern in this country, if you don’t know. So, it will be the same thing. We will beg, plead and dialogue with people; we are not going to shoot people. You could see us everyday begging and appealing to people; we will do it but we must be decisive because it must work. We want this to become an engine of production. What has changed countries is production. Go and check even in Europe, the Spanish people were enjoying and selling their gold when the Netherlands was busy investing in production. Today, Spain is in trouble, and the Netherlands is doing well. The Netherlands is a country with 33000sqkm of land and far less population, but its total export last year was $650 billion.
How do you address the issue of some of your supporters who attack and vilify people who do not support you?
I don’t agree entirely with that. Some of those people are not my supporters. They are people who have been paid by my opponents to infiltrate my supporters and do wrong and then they say it is Peter Obi’s supporters. Today, people are being paid to say and do all sorts of things about Obi, labeling him as incompetent and all that, just like what they said about my son. My son is a hardworking young man. Since he left university, he has never asked me for one pound. He will tell you that he wants to earn the money. I have always cared about Nigeria. If I tell my son that I want to buy him anything, he would say, ‘Daddy, you have a lot of people that you are supporting in Nigeria, support them because I can support myself.’ He told me that a lot of his friends want to come back to Nigeria but they are afraid of the insecurity in the country. He would ask if there is any way I could make it better for them to come back to Nigeria if I have the opportunity. He said a lot of them want to come back. He was born, raised and schooled in the UK. He is also working there now and he feels like a Nigerian child every day. As you know, my daughter had to even come back and take up a teaching job here in Nigeria. So, that is the way they feel; their feeling is, ‘what can we do to help?’ They are so passionate about seeing me do good to people. I want to show people love when they show me hatred. When you say people in the North, for example, will not vote for me, they are voting for me because I am going to solve their problems. I want people in the East to vote for people based on their competence. Don’t vote for Peter because he is from the East.
A lot of people say you keep talking about Anambra but you did not hold local government elections while you were there as Governor. How did you handle the local government money?
In short, I am giving you a mandate to go to Anambra State and see why local government elections were not held when I was there as governor. Those who went to court against it are those who are asking this question. Secondly, go and ask how their money was managed. It is simple. I am going to get some investigative journalists who will go to Anambra to verify this and if they find out that there was any way Peter Obi mismanaged local government funds, then hold me responsible. In fact, it was one of the most efficiently managed funds while I was there; that was how we cleared N35 billion worth of pensions and gratuity being owed to them. My Commissioner for Local Government was Azuka Enemuo. Go and ask anybody about her. She was one of the toughest women you can work with on the surface of the earth. When she says no, that is final and she was my senior. She would tell me, “Please, please, my young brother, I don’t want to see you in this thing.” And she is not a politician. I met her as the Head of the Local Government Office. My Commissioner for Health was appointed because when doctors went on strike, I visited a hospital and I saw him working and I asked him why he was there while others were on strike. He told me that he couldn’t abandon his patients and that doctors were not supposed to go on strike. And I told him he would be my commissioner and he said he would never be. But I went back to the office and announced his name. So, go and verify because whatever I tell people, I say, ‘Go and verify.’ So, that was the issue.
They are also asking why you are not in Osun campaigning for the Labour Party candidate; why?
Why am I not in Osun? When it is a state election, you are invited. I came back yesterday and I spoke to the Labour Party chairman who told me that we would be in Osun. For security reasons, I won’t tell you the date but we are going to be in Osun State. We are in contact with them.
Would you restructure Nigeria if you become president?
When you talk about restructuring, I have said severally that Nigeria as it is structured today cannot work. But it is not something that people will just say, let’s restructure. Let’s get to the issues one by one. For example, let’s look at the issue of security. Why won’t the states be in charge of their security?
So, are you going to bring the state police when you get there?
First is that the governors should be in charge of the security. So, even if a commissioner of police is posted there, the governor is in charge and he can remove the commissioner. I removed six police commissioners as a governor right from the time of Olusegun Obasanjo. My police commissioner was removed under Obasanjo. I went to Obasanjo and said: “Mr. President, I have security issues and I want the police commissioner in my state to be removed.” He asked me who I wanted and I told him that I wanted the Commissioner’s deputy to be in charge. He called the IGP, Sunday Ehindero, and that one said the deputy could not become the commissioner, unless he would do that in acting capacity. I told him to call him anything he liked but let him be in charge, and that was how Haruna became the commissioner of police in Anambra under my administration. Why won’t I hold the governor of Katsina responsible for insecurity in that state? First is that our police personnel level is unacceptable. Today, we should have at least twice the number of police personnel that we currently have in Nigeria. Today, we have 320,000 police officers. Egypt with 100 million people has over one million police officers. I have studied this even in Morocco and everywhere. And, out of this 320,000, I can tell you that about 70,000 are following people all over the place.
What do you have to say about the insinuation that Obasanjo is selling your candidacy in the North and forming an alliance with Ango Abdullahi; is there any truth in that?
I don’t know about that but what is wrong in Obasanjo selling my candidacy in the North? They are even selling my own candidacy; I have said it. Both presidential candidate and spokesperson of the NNPP, Kwankwaso and Buba Galadima all said the chief servant in Niger State as well as Dino Melaye in PDP have all said that Peter is qualified. None of them said Peter is not qualified. They have all said that Peter is competent to deal with the economy. But I am saying that we have an economic problem. So, you don’t want somebody to be on top of me when I can solve the problem and that is what I am offering. And that is why I am saying that I am contesting to be the president of Nigeria. I might be coming from a section of the country but I want to solve the problem of Nigeria. I want to start building a new Nigeria where Nigerians can be proud of and believe in. I came back from the UK yesterday. It will shock you that a young man approached me yesterday and said: “I saw everyone taking pictures with you and I asked them about you and they said you are going to be the president of Nigeria.” And I said yes, and he said he was 20 years old and his mother is a Nigerian but his father is a Jamaican. He said his mother is so nice to him and that he would want to come to Nigeria to set up a business and employ people but that he is afraid. Just like what my son told me, so many of his friends want to come back but they are afraid of the insecurity in the country. I told him that that is what we are trying to do. When we arrived at the airport in Lagos, I saw that same young man being interrogated by the Immigration personnel and trying to harass him. I called them and told them that the young man was coming to the country for the first time because he believes in the country and that is why he is coming. I told them that by the time they finish with him, he would go out and never come back again. So, they left him. He came and hugged me and said: “I know I can’t vote for you but I don’t know what I am going to do to help you. Can I collect your number?” I gave him my number and he gave me his own too and he said he would come back because of me. We need to do things that will give people hope. We want Nigerians to be proud that they are part of this country. We need to go to sporting events and compete as Nigerians. People are not proud to say they are Nigerians. Kenyans are hiring Nigerians every day. Other countries are hiring them and they are not asking them whether they are from East, West, North or South. When you go to a doctor… there was a time they said I would remove a procedure in the UK. I went to St Mary and Elizabeth Hospital and as I entered, two people appeared. They were blacks; one was from Ondo and the other was from the Eastern part of Nigeria. They were doctors. I didn’t have to say you can’t operate on me because you are this or that. So many prominent Nigerians have seen the same thing. Nigerians from the South East are all working in Saudi Arabia. Nobody is asking where they come from. Even the Dubai, where we go to celebrate, is a Muslim country. We all want to go there. If you go there, the only Catholic Church, St. Mary Catholic Church, was built by the Emir of Dubai; it is written there. I have met him there once. He goes there three times a year- on Christmas, New Year and Easter. So, why are we here basing issues on his religion, his ethnicity, it’s my turn? We want to remove all these. I want it to be the turn of Nigerians; the turn of Nigerian children and Nigerian youths to take back their country and I will help them to rebuild it.
You went to see Governor Nyesom Wike before he travelled; what did you discuss with him? Was it politics, another alliance?
I went to see Governor Wike because he is a governor of a state that is strategically important to the future of what I see and I am happy pursuing the ports. The ports in Port Harcourt can help to decongest the ports in Lagos and help in what I want to do with the ports. We must generate appropriate and better revenues than we generate today and I went to see him. I didn’t go to see him to be another gang-up. I and Gov Wike, notwithstanding anything, have been very close and cordial. I have invited him to a couple of things; don’t forget that this year, I have gone to commission projects for him in Rivers. We are friends. He was one of those who supported me when I was governor. I had issues with teachers when he was in the ministry of education as a minister of state. He supported me with UBEC money and everything. I am going to visit every governor in Nigeria to plead with them to understand; we must build a better Nigeria. Nigeria is at the brink of collapse. As I earlier said, in a short while, we will not be able to service our debts; that is what we should be discussing. When we don’t service our debts in the next trench, we will be finished.
You just came back from the UK, what was the trip like? What did you go there to do?
Well, this is the time for me to meet all those that can help. It is not when I get into the office that I will start looking for them. I am talking to people that can help us to find the funding and the support to be able to turn around the situation in which we are right now. I can give you a reference of the people you can call who have an idea of the type of people I am talking about and my trips are just one day. I was in London only on Monday. I arrived in London on Sunday night, finished my meeting on Monday morning and left the same Monday night. So, it was a business meeting, talking to people. I have a lot of other people I am going to see in Europe, America and everywhere. I want to know how they are going to help us. So, when I have the opportunity to assemble this team of new Nigerians; a Nigeria movement that everybody will be proud of, then we can start.
