A Presidential aspirant on the platform of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Mr Peter Obi declared that if voted president of Nigeria, he would replace the sharing formula of the monthly allocation with production formula to grow the economy.
Obi disclosed this in Calabar when he visited delegates of the PDP preparatory to the forthcoming party’s presidential primary of May 28 and 29.
The former governor of Anambra, said it is important for everybody to be productive if the nation must survive, adding that other nations in the world are busy producing while Nigeria is busy sharing and consuming.
He said this is not the time to dance and celebrate as a nation but a time to work and fix the nation that has been badly battered because of “our celebration of the wrong things”.
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‘Nigeria is a nation of over 200 million people with about 100 million living in poverty, over 18 million out of school children out of which about 10 million are girls.
‘We have a 35 percent unemployment rate and if we add underemployment it will rise to over 50 per cent, many of which are youths in their productive age, so we cannot be celebrating,’ he said.
The astute economist said there is nothing wrong in borrowing as a nation as the largest economies in the world are also in debt but the problem of Nigeria is that it is borrowing for consumption.
‘The consequences of borrowing for consumption today are that Nigeria is spending over 90 per cent of its revenue to service debts without much production to show for it.
‘Exporting crude oil has not saved Venezuela or any country. We need to invest in our massive land mass and grow our economy like other nations such as Singapore, Vietnam and even Morocco have done with tourism,’ he maintained.
He appealed to the party delegates to place less emphasis on sharing money as many politicians would come to them with money, warning that when it is time to vote they should consider the future of their children.
In his response, Mr Venatius Ikem, Chairman of the PDP in Cross River, said although things have gone really bad for the nation, ‘we can start repairing for the future by voting right.’
He said Obi is the kind of president Nigeria needs because after listening to him, every right-thinking person would have a sober reflection on the way forward for Nigeria.
“I believe if you become president, Nigeria will have a turn around. I, however, do not expect Nigerians to just wish but express their wishes through their support for Peter Obi,” he noted.