Tobias Sylvester
The presidential candidate of the Labour party (LP), Peter Obi said Nigeria needs a competent leader who would deliver it from its current mess which was caused by leadership failure over the years.
Peter Obi Says Nigeria Need A Competent Leader
The former Anambra governor, who spoke on Monday at the general conference of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) in Lagos, said the 2023 elections should be about competence and capacity rather than connections or religion.
According to him, Nigeria has already become a failed state and needs an urgent transition from being a highly insecure country to a secured country and from a country of lawlessness to a country of law and order.
Obi said, “Out of 200 million Nigerians, 60 percent is supposed to be working. So it (should be) 120 million Nigerians working, but today, Nigerians that are working are under 60 million.
“We are in a physical mess, total physical mess because of all this. Between January this year and April, the total revenue of the Federal Government of Nigeria is N1. 63 trillion but expenditure is N4. 72 trillion. If you minus this, we have a deficit of N3.1. trillion.
“How did we come here? It is the effect of leadership failure over the years. What are we going to do to come out of this? You need to have a visionary, articulated, competent leadership.
“The elections we are going to have next year will not be about tribe nor religion, not connections, not entitlements, it must be elections about character, competence, capacity and solutions to deliver.”
According to him, “investment in intangible assets such as education and power are critical for economic renaissance. What we need to do is the two most intangible assets: security; and law and order . . . provide conducive environment to attract investors, then education and power . . . the economy is driven by these intangible assets.
“Remember, the election we are going to have next year will not be about tribe, not religion, not connection, not entitlements but about character, competence, capacity, and commitment to deliver. We need a bold transition from a poorly secured state to a highly secured state.”
Obi said that Nigeria needs urgent transition from being a highly insecure country to a secured one and from a disunited country to a united one.
“In all these, it is important that we look at where we are today. Nigeria has qualified to be a failed state. We have indices and characteristics of a failed state,” he said.
“Today, we are among the top terrorised countries in the world; we are among the top kidnapping countries in the world. Banditry has taken over part of the country and Nigerians are being killed.
“Our most important source of foreign revenue, the oil, is also being ravaged by theft. We are no longer in control of our economy, we are in fiscal mess where our expenditure is much higher than revenue”.
KanyiDaily recalls that Peter Obi had expressed the desire to take back the country from its current sorry state and hand it over to the Nigerian youths.
