2023: I won’t give excuses if elected president – Obi

Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, on Monday, assured Nigerians that he would not make excuses for failures if elected president in 2023.

This is also as the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) rallied support for the Obi/ Datti presidency in Abuja on Monday, at a retreat organised by the LP for its national officers, candidates, and trade unions, in Abuja.

The event attracted participants from the labour hierarchy, led by Ayuba Wabba, president of the NLC president, as well as top officers of the labour party,

Speaking on day one of the two-day leadership retreat, Obi stated that the job of a leader was to solve problems and not to give excuses. He described it as disappointing for a candidate supported by organised labour to fail the people.

“I am in this retreat to listen. Even if we don’t achieve 100 percent, we must have made sacrifices,” he said.

The LP presidential hopeful decried the recurrent industrial action by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), 12 years after the Federal Government signed agreement with the union.

“How much is ASUU asking for that the Nigerian government cannot pay since the last 12 years? N1.2 trillion,” Obi said, noting that the revenue which accrued to the country for the month of July alone was enough to settle the union’s demand.

According to him, next year’s election would not be based on ethnicity or religion, but on character, competence and capacity, just as he decried the lingering Nigeria’s economic challenges.

Speaking on his experience as governor of Anambra State, he declared that “I solved these challenges at the small level; I want to solve them now at the larger level.

“The major problem facing Nigeria today is food inflation. We have enough land. The Sambissa forest is three times the size of Israel.

“The more you pull people out of poverty, the more you reduce criminality. I have said it before and I will say it again that the vast land in the North is the next crude oil of Nigeria and I am ready to use the land to make Nigeria self-sufficient in food production”

Wabba, president of the NLC, said that Nigerian workers would actively participate in selecting the next leaders of the country.

Wabba stated that protests and strikes would not fix Nigeria, stressing that the NLC and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) will activate their structures in Nigeria’s 774 local government areas for the LP.

The NLC president noted that politics has become business in Nigeria, adding, “people are selling properties to contest elections only to recover them again after winning. This is not the type of politics labour is preaching.