Peter Obi, former Anambra State governor, and presidential aspirant of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has blamed the lack of visionary leadership and decades of waste for Nigeria’s woes.
Obi stated this on Wednesday when he met with party delegates in Lagos, noting that instead of Nigeria being a producing nation, it was rather a consuming nation because of the failure of successive leaders to turn things around just like in the developed countries of the world.
The presidential aspirant said it was time for Nigerians to bring in a competent leader to start rebuilding the country and change the narrative, lamenting that only bad news ruled the airwaves in the country because of bad governance and irresponsible leadership.
Obi, noted that the spate of insecurity across Nigeria was because of the failure of successive administrations to place priority on education of Nigerians, urging PDP delegates not to listen to any of the presidential aspirants, including himself, when it was time to pick PDP presidential flag bearer, but put the picture if their children before them and ask themselves which type of future they wanted for them.
The presidential aspirant, recalled his achievements in Anambra while serving as governor, saying that he grew the state’s GDP substantially and left no debt, among others, lamenting that Nigeria was becoming a hopeless society and there was no indication things would get better.
“If you take money to make the wrong choice, the society we fail to build will take revenge.”
“That’s why I am appealing to you this time around to bring competent leaders that will start to rebuild this country. It is the children that we didn’t educate that become bandits today.
“We celebrate criminality, we have to stop. It is time to stop now, to move our country forward,” he said.
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The former governor, who also recalled his past admonition while in office as to the need to cultivate a saving habit but was not supported by his fellow governors as recorded in the book written by the former minister of finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, saying that Nigeria must invest and create jobs.
“Taking that step would reduce criminality in the country. You must create jobs, the more you push jobs out, the more you reduce criminality.
“It is an economic problem, we must do something about it. The number of people that are supposed to be working is not the number, out of 120million, only 40 million are working”.
“This country is not producing, the country must be productive. It is not about you, it is about the future of our children,” he added.
