Obi insists Nigeria stuck with insecurity as 133m live in poverty
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate Peter Obi has repeated his take that insecurity cannot be tackled without fixing the economy and reducing poverty levels, two issues that will be his top priority if elected.
With 65 per cent of a 200 million population living in poverty, Nigeria is courting disaster because the vast poor pose a security threat, Obi warned on Kaftan TV programme, The Candidates, moderated by Kadiara Ahmed.
“When you have over 130 million people in poverty you are bound to have a crisis because when people don’t know when the next meal is coming from, they become a security risk.
“To deal with this, we need to deal with the issue of food. We need to look at how do we feed the country considering that the greatest physical asset we have in this country is the uncultivated land in the North,” he said.
“The 2022 budget is about N21 trillion with a deficit of about N11 trillion all these are estimates. Approximately N6 trillion is for subsidy. By the time you remove subsidy, you’ve reduced this by half. I believe subsidy must go.”
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Election beyond promises
Obi, who appeared on the programme along with his running mate Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, insisted Nigerians must understand the 2023 election is beyond promises being made by various candidates, per Vanguard reporting.
He urged the electorate to consider the pedigree of those seeking their votes, by asking questions and looking at what a candidate has done in his or her public life.
Obi said he and Baba-Ahmed have demonstrated their capacity to create and manage wealth as private businessmen and have equally given a good account of themselves in public office, with him as a two-term Governor and his running mate as a federal lawmaker.