By Prince Tim Ogwuru
We are in a political season in Nigeria. Political rallies, town hall meetings, political debates, political gaffes and all manner of political events have taken the center stage.
Most political participants are promising heaven and earth, promising employment to young people, promising housing for people who cannot afford to buy, promising good roads, promising healthcare delivery even when it is very obvious that they are impossible tasks. Of course, Nigerians are not that that stupid and gullible and can decipher that they are all part of gimmicks of the political class.
But among all the political gladiators, Mr. Peter Obi has consistently said go and verify against all his claims, go and check my records in Anambra state when l was the governor of a state. He spent eight years as the governor of the state and several years in private sector up to the chairman of a leading commercial bank. Hence there is a dossier that could be used to pin down his stewardship or rubbish is so called unblemished claims. To my knowledge nobody has been able to fault any of his submissions in public nor damaged his personality with hard core evidence of corruption or mismanagement of public asset.
Media consultants and journalist, armed with all the tools of investigative journalism have not been able to unravel or excavate any serious report that could be used to deflate the claims of the candidate of Labour Party, Peter Obi.
He has been passionate about reversing the country from consumption to a production economy and maximizing the rich arable land and huge natural deposits beneath the surface of the country. He said that insecurity is fanned by an army of unemployed youths hopelessly roaming the street and vowed to turn their energy into a meaningful asset to the country.
Addressing the world at Chatham House, London recently, Obi vowed to dismantle all the structures that are holding down the country and retrogressing the wheel of development.
Obi said that his first task will be “To secure Nigeria, end banditry and insurgency, and unite our dear nation to manage our diversity, such that no one is left behind”. The growing insecurity in Nigeria, according to Obi, is not because the enemy is formidable, it is rather because of lack of focused leadership, ineffective security governance structure and poor coordination from the center”.
Obi who took over 15 questions from the audience after elucidating on various sectors said he and his running mate, Datti- Baba-Ahmed will dismantle the structure of criminality which have been holding down the country.
According to Obi, “the structure currently in Nigeria is that of criminality and it has impoverished the West African country.
“You have heard them say we don’t have structure; that is the structure we are trying to destroy, structure of criminality that Nigeria is being held captive; that structure is the structure that has impoverished Nigeria. We will dismantle it. It will not be there. I assure of you.”
He went further to state that he will shift the economy from consumption to production by running a production-centered economy that is driven by an agrarian revolution and export-oriented industrialization.
“With about 70 million hectares of arable land, we will pursue an agricultural revolution through proper segmentation of Nigeria to activate and harness the factor endowments of different parts of the country for both rapid and mechanized agricultural development and as a pillar for Nigeria’s other sectoral development and industrialization. We will incentivise and invest in agro-cluster and industrial cluster development across our geo-resource zones to take advantage of agglomeration and scale effects particularly in North-West, North-East and North-Central regions of Nigeria”.
Most importantly, Obi said that he will “restructure the polity through effective legal and institutional reforms to entrench the rule of law, aggressively fight corruption, reduce cost of governance, and establish an honest and efficient civil service”.
My question to Nigerians will be very simple – what are we waiting for, we have got our president and that person remains Mr. Peter Obi. As we all have agreed that corruption is one singular enemy that is capable of collapsing this country and that’s assuming we are sincere and genuine in our thinking, then to fight corruption head long, we need a character like Obi to lead the war.
Prince Tim Ogwuru is a political analyst who lives in the United Kingdom and can be reached through timothyogwuru@yahoo.co.uk.
