Labour Party’s Presidential Candidate, Mr Peter Obi, has continued to speak on how his presidency, if voted into power , will transform Nigeria and restore its pride by steering the Nigeria’s economy from that of consumption to production.
Speaking at the Labour Party and the Coalition for Peter Obi Leadership Summit, held in Abuja on Thursday, Obi dwelt on his favourite topic on how him and the Labour Party would harness the potentials and natural resources from all parts of the country for good; promising to build a country of integrity where patriotism will be the pride of citizens.
The summit had as its theme, “Youths, Governance and a New Nigeria.’’
According to the labour party presidential aspirant, “We have a country called Nigeria, but we don’t have Nigerians.
‘What we want to do is to create Nigerians and the only way to create Nigerians is to make people to have hope in Nigeria.
“Nigeria is a great country. God created this country and gave it everything to make it great. The only thing that is lacking is a simple thing called leadership.
“That is what Datti and I intend to provide.’’ he said.
He explained how he plans to harness regional potentials for national economic development.
“When I say we are not a producing country but a consuming one, it is true.
“For instance, Borno is a state situated on 70.9 square kilometres of land and today we are talking about Sambisa Forest. It is an asset for Nigeria.
“This is because Sambisa Forest is twice the size of Israel and it is an agricultural land that can give us food.
“If you go all over the northern part of Nigeria you will see that Nigeria is blessed with land that can give us food.
“We are waiting to share money from oil. How much do we generate from oil?
“Our total export as a country is 30 billion dollars including oil, yet we live in a country of over 923,000 square metre, almost one million square kilometres,’’ he said.
Obi said that Nigeria, when compared with Vietnam that lives on 331square kilometres of land and has a population of 100 million was lagging behind.
This, he said, was because Vietnam’s export is 312 billion dollars yet Nigeria could not do 10 per cent of Vietnam’s exports with a vast land and a population of 200 million people.
He added that Niger is two-and-half the size of The Netherlands, yet the state could not feed itself or the country whereas The Netherlands’ agricultural export for 2021 was 120 billion dollars.
“We cannot continue to live like this; our position is simple, all Datti and I want to do is to move this country from consumption to production,’’ Obi concluded.