Hold me responsible if I don’t change Nigeria - Peter Obi

The presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi has said Nigerians should hold him responsible if he fails to change the country.

He said this in an interview with the media when he paid a visit to Akwa Ibom State for his campaign rally.

Outlining some of his core mandates should he win the presidential election in February, Peter Obi noted that education, insecurity, unemployment and poverty eradication among others, are the major problems he plan to tackle.

He cautioned Nigerians to desist from listening to be who say they will structure as they brought the country to where it is today.

In his words;

“Education is the most critical investment any nation can do. One of the problems of Nigeria today is that we are not educating our people. I will fight the issue of insecurity because with insecurity you cannot talk about investment, even local people cannot invest. So I will make sure that we deal with the issue.

And how are we going to deal with it? There are so many things we will do including having multi-level policing, from local government to state, to federal. We’ll ensure we train them, and equip them properly, and we will get things going. Go and check anybody who is promising you anything, let him show you an example of where he did that thing he is promising.

I have a background as a businessman, everybody knows my name, they know the year I was born, and they know the schools I attended. I may not be the most educated among the candidates because I am a trader, but I have the privilege of passing through a number of schools no other contestant has passed through.

I didn’t say I am the most educated but I am the only person who can say I am an Alumni of Oxford, Cambridge. I have classmates everywhere, I am not claiming anything. So if you see people saying how can this man continue to claim that he is clean? For leaving 150m dollars and 30 billion naira, who else left money?
Everybody left debt. But Nigeria is a place we celebrate criminality and then penalise those who are doing well. So my own has become news because I have Trust. If you want, as an investigative journalist, I will pay for your ticket to go and see the Trust. Next year’s election should not be by tribe, let nobody tell you it’s about religion. It is what they use to confuse us. Nigeria is suffering, so let nobody tell you that it is about a tribe.

I am an Igbo man, and I am not contesting this election because I am from the South East. I am contesting this election because I am a Nigerian and I’m qualified. I don’t want anybody to vote for me by pitying me. We have about 60 per cent youth unemployment. Our youths with so much energy and in their productive age are doing nothing.

I am a Catholic, go to Dubai, the Catholic Church in Dubai was built by a Moslem. The Queen gave the land which was used to build the Mosque in London, the queen is not a Moslem. And stop listening to all these parties telling you about structure. They brought Nigeria to where it is today. When we started this democracy, we had less than 50 million poor people in Nigeria, today it is 133 million people and growing every day.

Nigeria can feed itself, let’s bring people who can focus on helping Nigeria.
Let nobody tell you it is his turn, or tell you, you have to wait for next time.
It is the turn of Nigerian youths and women to take back this country. Your children are suffering. We have children who have gone to school and cannot find jobs for years and someone is saying it is his turn, which turns? It is your turn to retire.

Let those people who want to be president come here as I came here and speak to you, not through their spokesperson. You don’t campaign anywhere in the world through a spokesperson, you go personally. If you are looking for a job, you go for employment directly, that is why I am here. I want you to go to the nooks and crannies of Akwa Ibom and tell them that somebody is determined to change Nigeria. Hold me responsible if I don’t change this country.

I am talking to you directly, my name is Peter Obi, there is no Pseudo name, that’s the name my parents gave me, so nobody is in doubt of my background. And I am not going to govern from Abuja, I am going to be in every state. So it is a job that requires physical and mental energy. We are all Nigerians, nobody is more entitled than the other.

Let’s talk about how we will better Akwa Ibom. You cannot drive from here to Calabar, and somebody is telling you to vote for them again, and somebody is telling you about structure, which structure can you use to tell people that you cannot drive from here to Calabar? Is that structure worth using again? Let’s stop the abuse of Nigeria.”

BS