The presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, at a forum with the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) urged Nigerians to check the sincerity of the promises made by the presidential flag-bearers of various political parties and support those they can trust ahead of the 2023 general election.
Obi, who said all the 18 presidential candidates will make the same promise, stated that his target is to move Nigeria from consumption to production, secure, and unite the country if elected as president in 2023.
The LP presidential candidate said this during a meeting with the leadership of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) in Abuja on Tuesday.
The former governor of Anambra State stated that Nigeria has met the qualifications to be characterised as a failed state, saying the country is no longer in control of its territory and economy.
Obi said: “All presidential candidates will tell you the same story, everybody’s story will be as sweet as the other ones. What you are going to do is to check the sincerity and the truth and the one you can trust.
“It is now who among these 18 presidential candidates can you trust because there is no promise that we are going to make that has not been made in the past, that promise has always been there.
“What I want to do is to move the country from consumption to production; it is not a productive country, our priority is to secure and unite the country. It is the number one thing you need to do.
“Nigeria has hit the two most critical things that qualify a country to a failed state, number one, when you are no longer in control of your territory, we are no longer in control of our territory, number two, is when you are no longer in control of your economy, nobody can tell you today how much they are going to sell a bag of rice tomorrow. No country can function like that.
“You saw the last report where we have 133 million people living in poverty, no country can have such a number of people living in poverty and won’t face the crisis we are facing.”
He stated that the figures of poor people in the country increased as a result of the cumulative effect of leadership failure over the years.
“I assure you that I am committed to the charter, the only thing there is how do we implement it, the will to implement it, and I can tell you that we need to restructure, but even as bad as the present constitution is, there is a lot of guarantees in it and there is a lot of things that you can implement that can make it work, it is not what is stopping us from production, that is not the problem of production, over the years, we have had incompetent leadership,” Obi added.
Also speaking at the meeting, the CAN President, Daniel Okoh, said the association was very careful not to be partisan, noting that it still maintains the position.
“All the positions we have taken, have not changed any of them, if we want to change any position, we will let the Nigerian public know.
“When people read insinuations on social media, I will advise that people will come to CAN to verify and to be sure that what you see out there is truly the position of the Christian Association of Nigeria,” Okoh stated.
