Peter Obi promises to move Nigeria from consumption to production nation

Tunde Opalana, Abuja

Former governor of Anambra State,Mr. Peter Obi has promised to move Nigeria from consumption nation to a production country if he becomes president of the nation come 2023.

Obi said this on Wednesday at the national secretariat of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) when he visited the Nation Working Committee to inform the NWC of his intention to contest for the party’s presidential ticket.

He dissected the socio- economic and political situation of the country and concluded that Nigeria is in a critical moment and need a person with high human and resource management ability to revamp Nigeria from the brinks.

Obi bemoaned that Nigeria is now on the top of the list of the most fragile state in the world and on the top of the list of the most terrorised state sitting behind Yemen and Afghanistan.

“We are the capital of poverty in the world. We now have more people living under poverty than most big nation’s combined. We now have several millions of out of school children.

“Unemployment is 33% officially but when you add under employment, it is about 55%. 60% of these are the young ones who constitute the asset and the engine room of their productive age.

“People now spend 100% of their salary to feed. It is a crises situation. What will somebody like me do:

“We need to move the country from consumption to production. There is nothing to share again,we now need wealth creators not wealth shearers. We have been sharing wealth for a long time, we need to start creating wealth.

“Our country is in a crises situation, we are now using over 90% of our budget to service debt. First first months of last year, we earned N1,875tr, we used N1,802 to service debt, that is 98%of our revenue was thrown into servicing debt.

” Last year we said that on the budget of N13tr, we were supposed to borrow N4tr but what we generated was far below so we borrowed N6.5 to N7tr. This year we said that we are going to generate N20tr to borrow only N7tr but I can assure you that we will borrow more than that so we have crises on our hands.”

Obi expressed his readiness to take the country out of the wood because he has what it takes basically as a trader who has created wealth in private space and in government space to fix the problems of the country.

He said ” go and look at the trajectory of where people were coming from and check all the places I have been given responsibility including being a governor. You saw what I did in Anambra state, you saw what I saved and all that.

“So in this situation, you need to bring in a competent person, a good manager of resource, we need to manage our resources.

“We need to employ people. I know what to do in puting money into micro, small and medium scale enterprises. I have experimented iron a small way which people can see. Otherwise how could a small state like Anambra end up on the day I was handing doing over not owing salary, pension, no contractor who has executed his job, raised certificate or supplied us goods were being owed. I left N75million which is over $500 million at that time in the bank. I know what we can effectively do to turn around the situation.