VP presidential debate: Osinbajo, Obi, others differ on good governance

…APC govt has spent N2.7trn on capital devt despite earning 60% less than PDP govt ….Obi: Atiku’s govt will create jobs to eradicate insecurity and instability About 60 days to the 2019 general election, political fireworks was kick-started on Friday as five vice presidential candidates of some of the 91 registered political parties presented to the electorate, their parties’ plans, policies and programmes towards ensuring good governance and national development. Prof. Yemi Osinbajo of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC); Mr. Peter Obi of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP); Ganiyu Galadima of the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN); Khadija Abdullahi Iya, of Alliance for New Nigeria (ANN) and Umma Gesto of the Young Progressives Party (YPP) told Nigerians what they have in stock during a debate organised by the Nigeria Election Debate Group in conjunction with the Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria (BON) at the Transcorp Hilton, Abuja. The candidates differed on current situation of major economic and development indices in the country while they were not too different in proffering solutions to identified problems. Prof. Osinbajo laid the foundation of his submissions on achievements recorded by the APC-led government in the past three years, most especially in the area of infrastructural development such as railway transportation, road projects, agricultural development and the social investment schemes of the government. The APC vice presidential candidate said the Buhari administration has spent N2.7 trillion on capital development despite earning 60% less than the previous PDP administrations. “We know where we were before this government come to power. APC government has begun the largest infrastructural development in the history of Nigeria. “We used to import rice worth $5 million daily before but now we produce about 90% of our rice consumption locally. “In every state, we have major road projects ongoing. For example, the Lagos -Ibadan expressway which is a major road in the commercial nerve centre that was abandoned for years by previous governments, is about being completed by the his administration”, he said. Speaking on the social investment projects, Osinbajo said that the government has invested N500 billion in every cycle of the SIP scheme such as the N- Power scheme, the 9.2 million pupils’ home grown school feeding programme, market moni and tradermoni soft loan scheme and the conditional cash transfer scheme. Osinbajo blamed infrastructural deficit inherited from PDP’s 16 years rule as an albatross to economic development which he said is coupled with sleazes in government. On the issue of government committing over N400 billion to oil subsidy payment, the APC candidate said subsidy is inevitable but its implementation by past government has been responsible for the systemic failure in the subsidy regime. While he posited that petrol subsidy helps, he said it should not be a permanent feature of any government. Osinbajo pledged anchoring the foreign policy of the APC on economy and security. Rounding off, he said: “Nigeria is where it is today because of the 16 years of the past government. In 2015, we set to reduce poverty through the Social Investment Programmes, to redress the damages that had been done and block leakages in government”. The PDP vice presidential candidate, Peter Obi, said Nigeria is presently not working but Atiku/ Obi Presidency is ready to make Nigeria work again. Analysing various sector of the economy, Obi said Nigeria today has the highest concentration of poor people, out of school children, highest number of Internally Displaced Persons, abuse of human rights and disrespect for rule of law as well as being an unsafe country rated third most terrorist ravaged nation after Iran and Afghanistan. The PDP candidate lamented the prevalence of unemployment in the country with about 44 million jobs lost. He said: “We need to create jobs to avert crisis, insecurity and instability with a more definite entrepreneurial educational system that will guarantee self-employment and boost job creation”. He said Nigeria invested a mere $30 billion in the capital market while South Africa invested $900 billion because the current administration was not doing what it supposed to do. Obi said the Atiku administration will rejig the economy, attract foreign and local direct investments and revamp the dead manufacturing sector. He said Nigeria’s manufacturing sector is under performing at just 8% which was responsible for closure of many factories and relocation of others from Nigeria. Obi disclosed that “a mere 0.5% of the N19 trillion bank loans are given to manufacturing sector”, while he also was not satisfied with 1.3% growth in GDP while population grows at 3%. On oil subsidy, he said what the APC government is subsidising is inefficiency and need to be reversed. He said: “We cannot continue to pay for inefficiency. If we remove subsidy today, the price of petrol will come down”. He also promised that the PDP administration will take ICT seriously as an economy component to be optimally developed, adding “We need to invest in ICT and that is what our government will do. That is what Atiku will do”. But, obviously the key highpoint of the debate was the tackle between the vice presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and current Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo and the Vice Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and former governor of Anambra State, Mr, Peter Obi, when they tackled each other on the issue of whether or not the present Muhammadu Buhari-led government is fighting corruption the right way or not. While Obi likened what the present government is doing to a situation where a shop owner shut his shop to be pursuing thieves, Osinbajo said that was necessary because if the thieves are allowed to steal everything in the shop, there will be no shop to open. While Osinbajo faulted Obi’s position that fighting corruption is not be an economic policy, he stated that “one thing we have noted is that you cannot have a vibrant economy with the kind of grand corruption that we have had in Nigeria in the past 16 years. I have heard one of the candidates say that fighting corruption is not an economic policy. With all due respect, if you don’t have resources, if you don’t have money, if your resources have been stolen, you cannot generate jobs, you can’t build infrastructure. In the past three years, the government of President Muhammadu Buhari has spent N2.7 trillion on infrastructure. That is the highest ever in the history of Nigeria, despite earning 60% less than the previous government. “We have spent N2.7 trillion within two budget circles and we are earning 60% less. When oil was $100 and $114 a barrel, no infrastructure was built, now we are spending on building economy and infrastructure. The second thing is that you must have poverty if you don’t have a social investment scheme. Like it has been mentioned, countries like India, like Mexico, like Brazil, these are countries that have social investment policies.” However, Obi insisted that fighting corruption cannot be an economic policy. He said: “Fighting corruption is not an economic policy. It is not that you cannot fight corruption, you can fight it more aggressively by addressing economic issues. For example, in 2015, unemployment and under-employment was 10%, today it is 40%. In 2015, we were attracting $21 billion in foreign direct investment, we attracted only $12 billion last year. Our GDP was $520 billion in 2015 and the per capital was 2500. Today, it is under 1900. If you look at our stock market, it has lost over N2 trillion in one year, so that is not a policy. You are not creating jobs, you are not doing the right thing and you are just fighting corruption. You cannot close down your shop and be chasing criminals.” Not done, Osinbajo responded that, “If you allow criminals to steal all the things in the shop, there will be no shop. That is what has happened in Nigeria in the last 16 years, which is what the World Bank told us, that the major cause of our poverty is corruption; that is the major cause. So let me say that there is no way we can minimise what has happened. We can minimise corruption, we cannot do what we want to do unless we are able to minimise or eradicate corruption completely and that is what we are trying to do,” he said. Speaking on the state of the economy, Obi bemoaned the way the economy was being run, arguing that it was bleeding under poor economic policies which is drawing the country back rather that moving it forward and that the economy was bleeding, noting that while the country was losing private sector investment, other countries were growing. “We have lost about $8 billion in the last one year, but look at South Africa, it is $900 billion and it is the second economy in Africa. That shows the shallowness of your economy, that shows that you have a government that is doing what it is not supposed to do. “The role of government is supervision and creating the support and the guarantee that will enable the private sector to drive the economy, so that investment needs to triple because it is even low compared to the size of your economy. That is why it is not creating jobs, that is what we have; the level of unemployment that we have today, you must look at how to drive up investment. We need to look at the overall economy, rejig properly and get the private sector to drive the economy with more investment. “Your banks today with all the loans they have given is about 15% of the GDP, when other countries are doing 50% and 100%. China is doing 250% of their GDP as credit to businesses, to private sector.” For Osinbajo however, the reason the economy is not growing is because of the poor or decay in infrastructure which has made it difficult for foreign investors to come into the economy, “Our country over the last several years had suffered a major infrastructural deficit. We don’t have rails, we don’t have roads, power. When we came into power in 2015, power was at 4000 megawats after 16 years, so you need strong infrastructure and nobody can make excuses about that, that is one problem that our administration is tackling, putting in place infrastructure,” he said. The debate was a period of intense emotion as each candidate tried to sell the agenda of their party to the Nigerian public. Kicking off the debate, Galadima in his opening statement, urged Nigerians to look at the candidates and their manifestos to make informed choices at the polls. He said: “Nigeria is in a critical stage, the intended economy is vulnerable and need an expert like Oby Ezekwesili that can reform the economy. ACPN will help fix Nigeria”. On the other hand, Abdullahi-Iya of the ANN said she believed all Nigerians should be concerned about the plight of children to secure the country’s future. She stated that her decision to run for the office stemmed from her concern about “every one of the over 2.1 million children in the North-East and IDP camps scattered across Nigeria’’. Getso in her opening statement said she was passionate about girl-child education, adding that she “spent the early years of my adulthood in the development of a common Nigeria’’. The YPP vice presidential hopeful said she was a pioneer member and founder of a women multi-purpose cooperative society in Bauchi State that had impacted the lives of a lot of rural women in the state. Getso said her presidential candidate, Prof Kingsley Moghalu, was a person with a lot to offer in terms service to the nation. “If you compare all the choices we have, you can see that Moghalu is among the best because he has experience in all sectors of the economy,’’ she said. Tunde Opalana, Abuja & Patrick Okohue, Lagos