Labour Party Presidential candidate, Peter Obi gives insght on how he will tackle myraids of problems confroting the nation thus giving assurance of hope but was to say that he cannot solve all the problems overnight. This much he disclosed on Arise TV programme monitored by our Correspondent, Deborah Onyofufeke

You called for suspension of campaign activities and you took the lead in that regard and you visited some parts of the country-Anambra east, Anambra west, what has been your experience?

Two, what do you say to the allegations from some of your critics who said you have been given only 24 or 12 loaves of bread and that you have been stingy in providing support? Can you tell us how many loaves of bread were provided and what your experience has been on your tours?

I can tell you, what Nigeria is going through today as regards this flooding is far more devastating than what we’ve experienced before. For those of us who have experienced it because I was part of the 2012 flooding, this is far more than 2012.

You can even see it in the number of deaths because in 2012, about three hundred and something people died. Of course, the farmland and properties everything that had been devastated, this is worse, and huge than what we ever seen.

Virtually, the entire fence in the state fell maybe except government house and a few facilities are not under the water. Similar situations in some part of Delta, some part of Rivers, you can go on and on. Over two thousand homes are under the water and of course millions of people are displaced already in the IDP camps; children out of school, it is something you cannot imagine.

So, for me, I don’t think it’s just about stopping campaign because what I saw, is far more than I can imagine. In terms of donation or providing bread, I have never provided any food, be it one bread to anybody. Whatever you must have seen, is what people brought on their own to where I visited. What I know, is to ask those who are involved or areas where I have been, I will ask the state or anybody that is coordinating them, to give me a bank account so I can help but what I found in some of the IDP camps, is that when I was going around and talking to the people who are there, they will tell you that they do not even have one naira, so what I’ve done immediately is to ask how many people are here they will say there are two thousand or three thousand as the case maybe. I can say ok, why don’t you give them this two million or three million or five million, so they can just share so people can have even if it is one naira.

Obi is better than others – Yakubu, Support group coordinator

 

Some of them were begging me saying sir, pls give us even if it is N100, so that we can have something because the government is struggling to feed them and nobody is giving them even one naira. So, I am going to contribute. I have been involved in this type of service, far before I became governor and you know yourself very well that in 2012, I came to Jonathan that I was going to Haiti when they had the earthquake and he said what are you going there to do? I said that’s what I have done all my life, that I and my family have been involved in such situations all over the world. While we were still talking, I showed him my son’s letter, I said I have withdrawn my son’s from school, we are all going to Haiti and we went to Haiti.

The ambassador then will tell you, the police People there, they all saw us in Haiti. I and my son were in Haiti and we were there for a week. Then, I was a serving Governor. It’s not just that it’s today I started doing it. You must intervene. That the situation in Nigeria now is hopeless. If there’s anything you are supposed to do, it’s that Nigeria has to deal with this issue.

I have two questions for you. Number one is: what will be your solution to the climate change problem because there’s climate change and there’s also the dam problem and that dam problem too that we’ve not done?
The second is this: there has been talk about ecological funds and I would like to ask you, while you were governor, what did you do with your own ecological funds and coupled with the fact that you were also governor in a state that after you left in 2017, Onitsha was said to be one of the most polluted cities in the world? In fact, it had 10PMS articulate matters. So, let’s talk about that.

Let me start with the case of Onitsha, you can go and ask Professor Kolade of UN , I was the first governor ever in Nigeria to approach him on Urban renewal because of Onitsha, following it through by visiting UN Inhabitant office in Kenya for them to help us to redesign and do the urban renewal of Onitsha, Nnewi and Awka in a clear study. The UN urban Inhabitant is there, if you listen to what I am saying, I followed it through.

On the issue of ecological fund, if you go and read who is the chief architect of new map, which is what they are doing today, it was me, who went to president Yaradua and told him that the Federal government cannot fund erosion menace in Nigeria.
Especially in the South East, that the only way to do it is to bring a long term loan, from world bank with federal government’s contribution and the state’s contribution to deal with this issue, that was how new map was designed. I championed the course of the new map you are seeing today.

Someone can say, yes, your house is very dirty but they don’t know how you met it and what you have been able to clean but like I said go and verify these two things I said today. My involvement with UN Inhabitant, how we went to Kenya, who was the first governor to do this, go and look at the record of the new map, I will show you letter from the ministry signed by John Ode, you will see my contributions to the new map.

Obi is better than others – Yakubu, Support group coordinator

 

Which is what everybody is using today to fund the ecological fund and what will I do in terms of this menace to stop this flooding?
There’s a combination of so many things that you need to do. We’ve talked about issues that even the minister collaborated it, the rainfall is not the issue. But if you think about the average rainfall in the past 20yrs since 2001, remains similar which means, it is predictable, the amount of flood that is going to come, but the issue there is, we have refused to dredge the rivers, we need to dredge River Benue, dredge River Niger, if you do River Niger now from Barrow in Niger state, down to the Atlantic Ocean, your water is salted, there’s no ability to hold the drainage and of course the tributaries; all this combine together and everything is part of what is causing this menace.

The rivers are no longer contributing to your economic growth as it should be because you’ve not doing anything and yet several contracts are being awarded, to this dredge which nobody knows where it is or what has happened to it.
If Egypt can keep River Nile, dredging it, filtering it, making it work, contributing to their economy, tourism and everything, why can’t we do it? Over several years these are things we need to do. You know these are things that I will ensure if we award the contract, we are not going to just sit down. We are not going to do that overnight but at least ensure it works. If you drive over it in dry season, like the River Niger you could see that you could even walk on the river. So it is something that is solvable.

Before you joined us, we were talking about the manifesto of the All Progressive Congress and Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and I made a comment that all of you presidential candidate say the same thing- security, economy, I will build infrastructures, I will create jobs.

Do we take a lesson from what happened recently in great Britain where a whole Prime Minister, Liz Truss stayed less than 50days she bowed out because she couldn’t figure out how to do it.

What is the difference really? How are you different from the other candidates? Because all of you seem to be saying the same thing.

All of us are saying the same thing. I have said it repeatedly, what makes a difference in this is who can we trust? What this election is about is trust. You are promising the same thing, the other person is saying the same thing, can we look at the antecedents of the other person, as promised in the past how he delivered it?

Or attempted to deliver it? He must have attempted to do it. Who do we trust among these people? Who among these people can we say have the character, the competence, the capacity, the commitment to at least do what he or she is saying. That is what differentiates us. People have promised in the past. We’ve had promises that dollar was going to be 1N to 1$, now we are almost N800 to 1$.

Nobody is saying anything. We’ve had promises where we were told agriculture is going to be this. We do not need all these fanciful, very good looking manifestoes or documents that are written, let the people come and talk. You made mention about Britain, it’s because what she promised, she could not deliver. Honourably, she packed her things and moved out because She could not deliver what she promised.

Everything fell apart and they are not looking at background, so, within one to two years, Britain has had Boris Johnson who is of Turkish decent, they’ve had somebody from British decent and they are now going to have somebody from Indian decent. They are not asking about their background, they are asking about their competence, their capacity, what they can do. What this man promised, I was speaking to a colleague of mine yesterday, somebody that I am very close to in the UK.

He said listen, as far as we are concerned, we don’t care if the man is a Nigerian, or a Ghanaian, or anything, we want to save Britain. We care about the future of Britain, we care about our economy. If it were Nigeria now, they will be talking about his ethnicity, about his religion, about his this and everything or whether he has a …manifesto or anything.

Like you said, come and tell us what you will do, how you will do it and don’t come and tell us through a Spokes person because this is the only place where people are campaigning through People. It doesn’t happen anywhere. Obama will come and say what he will say. People are talking so that people can take note not that they will bring spokesperson, so when they get in they begin to say it wasn’t me who said it, it was my party who said this. I want people to face Nigerians like I come to you, tape it. If I go and I cannot do it, I go home like Liz Truss. Nobody’s name is President or Governor anything

The manifesto is a social contract, if I go to the Labour Party or Conservative Party website now, the first thing you will see there is their manifesto and how they will do it. Why is it that you have not given us your manifesto.
Secondly, something happened recently that a lot of people said we must ask you, your Vice Presidential candidate said on a TV interview that the fact that Endsars, there was a massacre, is debatable. What do you say as regards that after Lagos panel of inquiry released a report to that effect.

I didn’t even listen to that, maybe I will go back and listen to it. I must tell you, I’m just hearing it for the first time and for me, the things that we need to probably open up tomorrow and look into, I have always said in my reconciliation, we must go back to certain things and be able to open it up, apologise to people because of the things we have done wrongly. There are so many things we need to apologise for in this country.

So, is it fair for your Vice Presidential candidate to apologise to Nigerians for making such assertion.

I am the Presidential candidate, I will take responsibility.

Ok. So, you want to apologise on behalf of your vice president?

No, I am not apologising, I said there are so many things I will apologise. I will aplogise to the Niger Delta people, the way they ‘ve been treated, where you can say the first place that we found oil in Nigeria, you can’t go there today, you can’t even live there too.

There are so many things to apologise for here, if we are going to move forward and I am going to do that. And I did it when I returned schools to the churches, I called the church owners, I said on behalf of this State, we did something wrong for taking your assets, pls I apologise, help us to build a good education facility and let’s manage it and within two years, we were number one.

What’s your take on EndSars? Were people killed? Because if your Vice President says it’s debatable, where were people killed? Was there a massacre?

For me, I said I will deal with that issue and I can deal with it when I come in.

Somebody just sent a text message saying that if Nigerians vote for you and you did not perform, will you resign as Liz Truss has done.

My own question is this, over the weekend, some friends made some observations about your supporters, I also share that view, that many of your supporters, particularly those who call themselves Obedients are very rude, callous, mean, they abuse people, they make enemies for you including persons who are your friends. They go on Twitter particularly and are perpetually demarketing you by abusing people. I think Farouq Kperoge wrote a piece on it.

And I’ve answered this question several times. one there’s an infiltration among my people by opponents and then, althogh, there are all those who believe in me who are angry.
What I say to people is this, can you focus on the person. I went to a man’s house, and I was a governor, and I was kept outside his door for four hours. If you ask Senator Ayo Ogueze, he will tell you this story I am telling you.
Ayo Ogueze said to me Peter are you a Governor? I said yes. I said until that man comes out and I know he is aware I am going to wait here, I will not take it out on the man, what he’s people are doing to me. When he came out he was apologetic.
I am Peter Obi, who is campaigning, who wants to be president but they keep saying the behaviours of my people is exactly what Peter Obi is going to do. You know me, I’ve been in government, I serve People faithfully, in the most humble manner.
I have never raised my voice at any body. You cannot go and say Peter because your son or your daughter shouts at people, that is you Peter. I have told them please but some of them are angry. Some of them have been out of school for the past ten years without job, they cannot control their anger.
All I can do is to appeal but to say because of what these people are doing, let’s follow these people who have not provided light for the past 20 years, who have brought us where we are today. The alternative is no.

Today, the Americans issued an alert as regards insecurity, threats of terror attack and the likes. If you were Commander in Chief, give us step by step of how you would respond to the alert as issued by the Americans yesterday.

Even with a gun on my head, I can’t give you details of how I’m going to handle the security issue but I become Commander in Chief and I will deal with it decisively. I can’t tell you how I am going to deal with it because if i tell you, then it won’t work.

But you have the responsibility to protect the people . RTP

Yes, My first responsibility in this country is to secure life and property. It’s the most critical thing because unless you do it, nobody will invest in this country. The farmers can’t go back to the farm, so there’s no food production, there’s nothing that would happen without security but for me, to open up or disclose my strategy on how to solve security challenge in the country, I will not do that.
Not even in America, all the things I’ve followed, in America, even when they were going in, in Baghdad and everything, they were just saying they will attack massively and decisively but they never gave us the details. How can I tell you inch by inch what we are going to do?
I will be in charge I will be Commander in Chief and I have said in security, we will be responsive and responsible. That means, whatever happens, we will deal with it decisively and someone has to be responsible. If you are not doing it, you are out. We are not going to wait.

You will sack a lot of service chiefs?
I said we are not going to wait. Ask those who worked with me, you either deliver or you go. You can’t just stay when things are not working.

Ok. In the case of Acuzu SARS…what will you do with it?

Acuzu SARS, you know I don’t know what you are talking about in Acuzu SARS. Acuzu SARS were there before I became Governor. It’s a police formation, police is controlled by Federal Government, it’s like when somebody said I ordered people to arrest him, no Governor controls police.

Did you order El-Rufai areest and detain him in Anambra?

I said it in Kaduna, I said police Commissioner who was involved in charge that time was from Adamawa, the AIG was from Nasarawa, the DIG was from Kano. My ADC was from Kano. How can I order these people to arrest El-Rufai, who is their brother when in fact it was me who they will order to arrest. No matter how ruthless I am, I don’t even have the order.
So, how can I give order to arrest him, for what?

Big problem that we face now as nation is inflation at 20.77 percent.
If you were to become the president of Nigeria, what are you going to do about this phenomenon that I refer to as a pandemic of empty pockets because some of us we are suffering from it.
Between 2015 to 2022 now, we are facing the pandemic of empty pockets.

If you are going to deal with issue of inflation and issue of rising exchange rate, you must deal with two issues. Fiscal rascality and production. If you deal with these two issues, you start bringing down the inflation. Today your food inflation is 23 percent, with this flood, quote me, it is going to be far worse. These are issues you need to deal with. If I have time, I will expantiate to you how you are going to deal with this issue. That was why I said the country is not productive. You must move in for consumption to production. Other countries have done it, the studies are there and you can do it and in doing that increase, your GDP, per capital and everything will soar.

So how do we make this country productive? What do we need to do?
First thing is that you have to feed yourself, we are not feeding ourselves, if countries like India as large as they are can feed themselves, India today is self sufficient in food production. I was in England when India could not feed themselves. In fact, they were rationing food.
Today, India, is self sufficient in food production. Pakistan is self sufficient in rice production. So is Vietnam. They’ve become an exporter. India has actually become an exporter of agricultural produce. As large as they are 1.4 billion people, and the greatest asset of this country is the vast uncultivated land we have in the North. In naira terms, our GDP is about a hundred and eighty trillion in naira terms as at December and agricultural components of this is about 41.8 trillion which is about 22/23 percent of the components and we are like this, where we are. If we decide today, our population is between 200 and 220 million. If you use an average of feeding 220 People, at one thousand per day, annually, you are going to have about 80 trillion. If you have 80 trillion today, you’ve almost doubled your GDP contribution from agricultural sector and feed yourself. You’ve almost doubled your GDP contribution from that sector because you are now having about 38.5 more.
About 90 percent there about in terms of GDP growth from that sector so if you add the extra, you are going to move your GDP by almost 20percent from 180 to about 218 or something like that. With all the other things that are going to come with it, if we are able to export, the thing is if we are able to do this, we are going to bring down the food inflation.
We are going to create more jobs. We need about seven million tones of rice today, we are producing about half of it, with this flooding, like I said, it is going to get worse . Imagine if we can double our rice production today, if we can tripple it, which is doable. Why I said it’s doable, India is 1.4 billion living in 3.2 million land size, and we live on one third of their size with a population of two hundred and something million.

But it’s not as easy as you just said because what it will mean is that you will need to buy more guns to fight the bandits that do not allow people to farm again, to fight the bandits that killed 100 farmers in Zamamari, to fight the legacy issues of infrastructures, that inhibit production.
Besides, a lot of people keep asking, you keep talking about production, but as a business man you import a lot into this country. These are some of the things they have against you. You talk about production but you are a big net importer into this country and how will you solve those legacy issues about insecurity.

Let me tell you one thing about security, I have been going round this country, I visited five prisons and I interracted with one thousand persons asking to know why they got involved in Kidnapping. Their response is: “I have no job”. “Why were you involved in this, I have no job”
I asked them how much were you paid in your last operation, you won’t believe it, N30, 000 ,N25,000, N100,000. What this shows is that, if these people can have steady income, of N50 ,000 they won’t be involved in that.
The more you pull people out of poverty, the more you reduce criminality. We have these things in Brazil. I can show you countries where it’s been practiced. All these agitations and criminality was all over the place in Brazil until Brazil decided to invest in these people. So, I am telling you now these things that I am going to do will reduce criminality because they will be part of the format that will be earning income.
Today bandits are taking over eight local governments in Niger state, I can tell you, if you put money in the fatherland, of Niger state today, you will reduce them by 50percent because they’ve found something they are doing that will give them money. What else do they want?

You talked about Brazil so are you going to do social investment because that was what brought People out of poverty in Brazil?

No. I am going to do a combination of everything. There is a combination of everything. You are not going to do one straight thing, because the more we do it, so we deal with those legacy issues. On issue on what my importation is, what I did, and it’s not just the issue of what I did, go and ask anybody what my business is and that’s what I even studied. If you go and check what I studied in Harvard, is market to market management, I am a distributor, go and ask Coca Cola, that are in Nigeria, as at the time I was in Nigeria, I was their biggest distributor. It’s like saying Walmart, Walmart today, sells goods from Vietnam, India, they don’t manufacture. My job is not manufacturing. I invested in manufacturing companies but my job is not manufacturing, it is distribution. When I was doing business, I sell less than a quarter percent. 25 percent of what I sell are imported goods. The rest are manufactured goods. It’s a mixture. So, if you go into supermarket, you will see local products and everything and I was productive. What is killing Nigeria today is wealth without enterprise. I was employing people, I was doing business.

 

You are running on Labour Party platform and you know Labour’s view that subsidy should not be removed

No. It’s not their view. Their view is that you have to explain your other benefits. They don’t want it remove because people have seen things removed and nothing came from it, people have seen privatization of power and nothing came from it

There are myraids of problem confronting the nation ranging for improved government revenue, accessibility to pipe-borne water,
and other problems. How will you go about all these problems?

If you look at what I have been saying, I didn’t promise that if I come in, everything will change overnight. I am not one of those who promise such things. We will start somewhere. We have to start gradually that’s why when people said 100 days. Nigerian problems cannot be solved in 100 days but I am going to give people hope.
The things I promised will be immediate, we will stop stealing of government money because I will be in charge and those who are going to steal it will meet what they didn’t bargain for, that one can be immediate.
The issue not subsidy can be immediate because we will show the people the alternative. I am not going to tell you I am going to give you pipe borne water immediately. I agree with you that even the issue of agriculture is not something we will solve overnight but we will start and I can assure you, we can increase it within the shortest possible time.
For Power; Egypt, Vietnam, India doubled their power in five years and it can be done.I will study what they did. India, was able to move from starving in about a decade to feeding themselves. The land is there, it’s just a question of changing to engagement. It’s no longer when ministry of agriculture will be involved in it. There are farmers. I’ve been part of financing the biggest rice farm in Nigeria, Onza, it generates it’s own power from one of the waste.
These things can be done as quickly as possible if you have your bank of industry, give it the support it needs, just like industries. In this flood situation, there are so many industries I saw in Onitsha. They are things you can do. When I said federal government should intervene in the flood situation, some people opposed and I said listen we are on a federation, you cannot leave the governor of Bayelsa, Rivers, Anambra, Edo or any of the other states running around.
They are the father figure before the federal government comes in. That’s what you see in America. When things like this happens, the president comes in declares a state of emergency, bring their presence to bear. You don’t just leave them. That is why you are in a federating unit. During covid, America brought money and shared to people not the states because that’s why they are in a federating unit.