A presidential aspirant on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, Mr Peter Obi, says it’s time to work and fix Nigeria.
He stated this on Friday in Calabar during his meeting with delegates ahead of the party’s forthcoming presidential primary.
Obi, who said that if elected president, he would replace sharing formula of monthly allocation with a production formula, added that everybody must be productive for the nation to survive.
The former governor of Anambra State said, “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 35 per cent 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.”
Obi further stated that borrowing as a nation was not wrong as the largest economies in the world such as America were also in debt but lamented Nigeria was borrowing for consumption.
“The consequences of borrowing for consumption today is that Nigeria is spending over 90 per cent of its revenue to service debt without much production to show.
“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 has done with tourism,” he said.
In his response, Chairman of PDP in Cross River Mr Venatius Ikem, said, “I believe if you become president, Nigeria will have a turnaround, I however don’t expect Nigerians to just wish but express their wishes through their support for Peter Obi.”
