POLITICS: Hold me responsible if I don’t change Nigeria —Peter Obi

 •I’ll replace sharing formula in Nigeria with the production formula

By Chioma Onuegbu, Uyo

THE Presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), and two-term governor of Anambra State, Mr Peter Obi, recently visited Akwa Ibom State for his campaign. Speaking with newsmen before the campaign rally, he revealed his plans for Nigeria if elected president of Nigeria next month including the development of the Niger Delta region, and making Nigeria as a country to work again. Excerpts:

In 1983 the Senate approved the establishment of Ibaka Deep Seaport here in Akwa Ibom. If you become the next president what is your plan for that project?

We are talking about how we compete in the world today. You compete by producing something that you export. So we are not doing Akwa Ibom a favour by developing the Deep Seaport, rather Akwa Ibom is offering us a space to develop an export channel which I am going to develop. Akwa Ibom can become a processing centre for export. I want to change it to a processing centre for export. The reason our currency is collapsing today is the function of our reserve, as we have no reserve.

 We have a problem because we’re not exporting anything. If you are exporting something, you won’t have a dollar problem. Vietnam doesn’t have a dollar problem, and Malaysia which is less than 50m people does not have a dollar problem. In Nigeria, everybody is waiting to share money from oil. I will remove sharing formula and replace it with the production formula. So we are not going to waste our money.

One of the presidential candidates said if he wins the election he will sell the NNPC. What is your take on that?

That is where we are having problems because we are dependent on oil. Oil is a diminishing asset that’s not giving anybody, anything. Oil contributes less than 10 per cent of our Gross Domestic Product, GDP, but it contributes about 50 per cent of federal government revenue which should not be. If we are a productive country, we can earn more money from other areas apart from oil. Akwa Ibom can earn more money from other things but we just believe in consumption and this formula of sharing. We don’t believe in production and that’s why I keep saying that the reason millions of people have been thrown into poverty is that Nigeria is not a producing country.