The former Governor of Anambra State and the Deputy Director-General of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) National Campaign Council, Mr. Peter Obi, has told Nigerians in the Diaspora that President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan remained the best option among the candidates for the presidential election next month.
Obi added that the President deserves another four years to consolidate the reforms he had started in the country.
He also advised his audience to take a critical look at Nigeria and those seeking to be elected in the forth-coming elections in the country.
Obi, who spoke separately yesterday with Nigerian communities in Holland and United Kingdom (UK) said: “When you look at all sectors critically, you will see overwhelming evidence of a President who is focused on bringing back the lost glory of the country. Under him, rail transport that stopped over 30 years ago is back.”
“Besides rehabilitating old, narrow gauges, many standard gauges are under construction in accordance with the 25 years strategic Railway plan.”
“Today, the aviation sector has changed a great deal, with 22 remodelled airports as well as five new international terminals bring constructed simultaneously in Abuja, Kano, Port Harcourt, Lagos and Enugu. In the area of corruption, the President is focused on building institutions that will stop the menace by not exposing people to the temptation of corruption. With what he has done in fertiliser procurement and distribution, it is working. Going by his strategic agricultural programme, in the next three years, Nigeria will be self-sufficient in rice production and that is even the reason while some countries are against him – the fear that his aggressive agricultural programme, if allowed, will affect our import of rice.
The former Anambra State governor appealed to Nigerians in Holland and London not to be carried away by the clamour for change, which he described as a mere sloganeering by the opposition without convincing anybody on the dynamics of that change.
He said: “The opposition is playing on the psyche of our people by shouting the need for a change. Let me ask you; were there not changes in Libya, Egypt, Iraq and other places? I am sure Nigerians do not deserve such a change. The change we want in Nigeria and the change taking place in all parts of the country cannot come from a 73-year-old elder statesman, however morally upright he is acknowledged to be. What people of that age do everywhere is to offer advice to the younger ones that have the capacity and energy to drive the change we clamour for or sustain the change already begun, as is the case with Nigeria.
“The other day, Governor Fashola said that Lagos needed a younger person to govern because of the stress and strain attendant with governance. If Lagos needed a younger person, what of Nigeria as a country that has the stress and strains of Lagos many times magnified? Even in the Western World, many of their leaders are under 60 years. The U.S., for example, has never been governed by a president over 70 years at the start of his tenure.
Speaking on the security situation in some parts of the country, Obi said that the world as a whole was witnessing security challenges, but assured Nigerians that President Jonathan is working round the clock to bring the situation under control.
He said the measures he had taken, including massive procurement of arms and ammunition for the military, were necessary steps as there are no miracles to that, as some people would want Nigerians to believe.
Obi, who said that the decision to interact with Nigerians in the Diaspora was to explain the real issues involved in the coming elections as a basis for their interaction with Nigerians everywhere, especially with the people at home.
Commenting on the change of dates for the elections by INEC, Obi said that the PDP accepted it because it believed the reasons that informed that were genuine.
He said that a situation where most states had not achieved 70 per cent in the distribution of Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs) should worry everybody and expressed optimism that the shift will enable more Nigerians to collect their PVCs.
