- Take back your country, Obi tells Nigerians
BY BENEDICT NWACHUKWU, ABUJA
The Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, has re-echoed his call on the youth of Nigeria to rise up and take back their country with their ballots by voting massively for him and his running mate Datti Baba-Ahmed in the February 25 presidential election.
Obi made the call on Thursday while addressing a mammoth crowd at the Old Parade Ground in Abuja.
The Labour Party standard bearer told the excited crowd that Datti and himself are offering Nigerian security and ensure that tribal inclination is totally wiped out from the annals of the country after five years.
“What Datti and I are offering you is security. Criminals are no longer formidable unless there is no leadership, insecurity will be a thing of the past. We will ensure that we unite Nigerians. We will ensure that after five years, nobody will say I’m from the East, west, north or south. You will be proud of your country because your country will move from consumption to production.
Obi lamented that the number of Nigerians that were monetarily poor has doubled from 2012 till date and noted that the country has been plunged into multi dimensional poverty thereby becoming the headquarters of poverty in the world but reassured the citizens that a new Nigeria is possible.
The former governor of Anambra State said his coming into the race was to reverse the negatives of the country assuring that an ObiDatti government will create employment for the youth.
“We will make our youth productive. Our youth are among the most intelligent in the world and we will utilise them and make Nigeria great again. With our government, unemployment will no longer be spoken of in Nigeria. We are looking forward to the youth taking over from us not the elderly because the youth is the strength of every country.”
He reminded the youth that they are the ones running the election through him and Datti that they are only representing the them and reemphasized that the February 25 elections will not be about ethnicity or tribe adding that every tribe is suffering, every tribe is in pains. He also said it will not be about religion noting that Nigeria is a multi religious country.
Obi who had charged the nation’s capital with his Wednesday’s strategic visits to some markets in Abuja and a road show this morning, making the rally a carnival-like show, told the jubilant crowd that a revolution is coming if the people vote for him and Datti into office on February 25.
Obi assured them that the LP government is going to do things differently and promised to revolutionize the country if the party wins this year’s presidential election.
His words: “Nigeria in the past 20 years have produced insecurity; Nigeria in the past 20 years have produced poverty and unemployment.”
He said his government will start by revolutionalizing Nigeria as a country and move to provide good things of life.
“There will be a food revolution. We are going to make food abundant so that Nigerians will have no reason to be hungry again.
“We will empower women and youths. We will unite Nigeria. In the next five years, you will be proud to be a Nigerian and nobody will treat you based on where you come from,” he said.
The LP candidate noted that in 2012, unemployment was 16 percent, but now it is 65 percent.
“We will employ our youths. Nigeria will be a great nation again. Join us to build a new Nigeria. You are the ones contesting this election through us, we are only representing you,” Obi said.
“Labour Party is producing what has never happened before. For the first time, the presidential candidate and the running mate, and the National Chairman were born after independence.
“This election will be by competence. We are competent people. We are compassionate people. Our commitment is total, hold us responsible for a new Nigeria.
“We will stop stealing. They want to buy your votes. If they give you money, collect it, it is your money, collect and vote for us,” he added.
The vice presidential candidate Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, described Obi as a shining star, noting that for eight years as Anambra State governor, he borrowed no money.
Ahmed stated that after nine years, Obi is coming back, not for Anambra but for Nigeria.
“Anybody who tells you the security situation in the country has improved does not mean well for Nigeria.
“Peter Obi will unite Nigeria. We are coming to do things differently. Peter Obi is going to work for Nigeria,” he assured.
Meanwhile, 16 days before the all-important 2023 Presidential election in Nigeria, the LP presidential candidate on Thursday got a huge boost to his aspiration with an endorsement from the umbrella body of the Ijaw people known as Ijaw National Congress, INC.
The landmark endorsement was carried out at the Ijaw House, Yenaoga, Bayelsa State, on Thursday morning during an interactive session with the apex Ijaw socio-cultural body.
The Ijaw, who are spread from Sierra Leone to Gabon, dominate Bayelsa State, have sizeable populations in Delta, Rivers, and Ondo States, and are spread around the coast of Nigeria. They have a population strength of about 4 million, which could be about 2% of the Nigerian population of 200 million plus.
The endorsement by the INC is a follow-up to the one done by Southern Ethnic Nationalities comprising, the Yoruba apex group, the Afenifere, Pan Niger Delta Forum PANDEF, the Umbrella body of the Igbos, the Ohanaeze Ndigbo and the Middle Belt Forum announced in Abuja last week.
The LP Presidential flag bearer during interaction told the Ijaw National Congress that he is seeking the people’s mandate to fill the vacuum created in our polity by successive leadership failure.
He told the people that a new Nigeria is possible and it has to be based on justice and equity where the people’s resources should be used to develop their areas.
The former Anambra state governor assured the Ijaw that he and his Vice are determined to create a new Nigeria where the people will live in peace secured and in harmony.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo had led high profile Nigerians that includes first Republic Commissioner of Information, Edwin Clark, and renowned jurist Afe Babalola among others to endorse the LP presidential candidate who is enjoying the massive support of Nigerian women and youths.
