By Chinelo Obogo and Chukwudi Nweje
Presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Mr. Peter Obi, has said he would deal decisively with insecurity and ensure that any service chief or member of his cabinet who underperforms is sacked immediately.
“My first responsibility in the country is to secure lives and property and unless it is dealt with, we cannot make progress. I will be the commander-in-chief and will deal decisively with insecurity. However, even if you put a gun to my head, I cannot give you the step by step procedure on how security would be tackled.
“I will take very swift decisions and someone has to be responsible for whatever goes wrong. If you are not doing your job well, you are out. We are not going to wait. Any service chief or anyone who underperforms would be sacked. Go and ask those who worked with me, you can’t just remain there when things are not working,” he said.
Obi, who spoke on a live interview on Arise TV said he would resign from office if elected and he fails on his promise to turn Nigeria around.
He said his administration would encourage local refining of petroleum products through modular refining as well as bringing together those currently engaged in illegal refining and making them conduct their business under strict guidelines.
“We have to start somewhere. What drives the economy is giving the people hope. There must be alternatives before we remove the subsidy, we would encourage local refining through modular refineries and all those that are currently illegal. They would be given an operational guideline that they must follow.”
He said that he would remove petrol subsidy but ensure that there are better alternatives to cushion the effect on Nigerians.
“I am promising you that within the shortest possible time, we are going to have local refineries, whether it is modular or not. Even those that they say they are refining illegally, I will bring them and say, ‘You were illegal but now I want you to be legal, so, how can we make this business work because if we make it work then we would be able to employ labour, we would be able to task them and get more revenue. To generate more revenue means that we would allow people to create well. We don’t have revenue because there are many people who are living in poverty.
Obi described the current situation in the country as hopeless and requires a candidate with a well-thought-out approach to fix them.
He listed three major steps he would take to turn the Nigerian economy around to include addressing food insecurity, ending crude oil theft, and fixing the power supply.
“The first is that we must feed ourselves. Nigeria cannot feed itself and we must invest in the vast lands in the north. India was able to move from food deficiency to self-sufficiency in food by investing in agriculture. Today India is an exporter of food.
“We must also stop crude oil theft, and we can do this by giving targets to oil companies on what we expect from them, and we must also address the problem in the electricity industry. I will not go into whether the privatisation was transparently done or not, but we must address the issues of the transmission companies. The generation and the distribution companies have been privatized but the transmission company is still controlled by the government, the transmission would be decentralised.”
On how to revive agriculture in the north when terrorists have sacked farmers and taken over farmlands, Obi said the first step would be to address the issue of poverty.
He noted that part of the problem in the country is that people celebrate wealth without enterprise.
“What is killing Nigeria is wealth without enterprise” he added.