28 days to the general elections, Labour Party’s Presidential candidate — Peter Obi, has bemoaned the nation’s current leadership which is “breeding poverty, hunger, and insecurity,” according to him.
He said this during his party’s rally held on Thursday at the hockey pitch of the Abubakar Tafawa Bewa Stadium in Bauchi State.
Obi said: “Whenever I’m in Bauchi, I’m reminded that once there was a united and peaceful Nigeria. Nigeria was on the path of greatness from a revered leader from Bauchi and that is Tafawa Balewa. I come from Anambra State and I live in Onitsha where a man who believed in the unity of Nigeria, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, was from.
“Nigeria is breeding poverty, people are poor in Nigeria, people are hungry, people are insecure. All the money that we have borrowed, if we had used it the way Tafawa Balewa used the money he borrowed, Nigeria would have been heaven today.
“On June 19, 1974, Tafawa Balewa applied to the World Bank to give him $ 82 million to build the Kainji Dam to generate power. Today, Kainji Dam is still there, it was supposed to generate 750 megawatts. Today, the equivalent of that money is supposed to be about $1.250 billion. Today, Nigeria is owing N77 trillion. If you divide it by the value of what Tafawa Balewa borrowed then, we would have had 150 Kainji Dams and Nigeria would have been exporting power to other countries today.
“This is a city (Bauchi) where someone who wanted to build a new Nigeria comes from and we are here saying that we want to build one Nigeria. A new Nigeria is possible, a Nigeria where you have jobs, a Nigeria with economic growth, a peaceful Nigeria, a secure Nigeria, that is what we want to build,” he said.
He urged Nigerian voters not to vote based on ethnicity or religion, pointing out that people from all the zones of the country were currently living in hunger.
“They’ve told you lies, you voted for them, today, you’re hungry. Elections that are coming, don’t allow anybody to tell you to vote based on tribe or religion because people from the north and south are hungry, they didn’t give you food. People from the north don’t go to school because they didn’t provide schools,” he said.
Obi also promised to create jobs for Nigeria’s teeming unemployed youths and assured the people of Bauchi that the newly found oil in the state would be used to develop the state.
He said: “I’ll ensure that you have jobs, I’ll ensure that you are secure, that is what Datti and I will do. Vote for us because all the people coming here to campaign for you; you voted for the APC and the broom swept you into hunger. You voted for the PDP but the umbrella leaked and today, you’re hungry. But we want you to vote for man, wife and child.
“We want the oil that has been discovered in Bauchi to be used to develop Bauchi and the north, to give you jobs and to ensure that things are working, and not for people to steal the money and everybody is hungry,” he concluded.
