Unic Press UK: Peter Obi who spoke at “The Platform” – an annual event on leadership – that was held in Lagos on the 1st October 2016, addressed a lot of issues on governance in Nigeria.
The popular statements from Obi’s speech that is on the video herein included:
- “When you borrow for consumption, when you have no savings, you are heading for a disaster.”
- “There is nothing wrong in borrowing, but the question is what are you borrowing for, are you borrowing for consumption, or are you borrowing for production? The fear is that we are borrowing for consumption.”
- “Peter Obi is travelling on his own, he is carrying his bag, I’m a young man, I can carry my bag.”
- “There was a time they wanted to go to what is called World Igbo Congress in America and they showed me that somebody before me had gone with ngn40 million, and they said they reduced my own to ngn32 million; I said to the Permanent Secretary can you write to me what is the implication of this to Anambra state. Nothing. He just kept telling me that they have reduced it. I said no no no let one person go.”
- It costs an average of N2 billion to run the office of the first lady and all the office does is to create confusion. If you do away with it, you have saved a state government of N2 billion and N72 billion for all 36 states.
- We handed over the schools in Anambra to Churches and by 2013, we were number one in WAEC.
- I reduced my convoy to five vehicles and you cannot buy fuel unless I am in the car.
- If I sleep in a hotel and have to pay ngn250,000 a night, I will be awake all night feeling like I was robbed.
- “When I came into office, my first trip to Abuja I traveled with over 30 people. Everybody had a title to be in the plane. So I asked myself, I am the only one being invited to Abuja. I pay for 30 people to Abuja, constitute a problem to the traveling public, I am the one going to Abuja for a meeting. Because they are idle and in the hotel, they eat more so I have a lot of bills to pay. In the end, every trip was costing me N10 million and at times I do this four to five times in a month so I had to ask what the purpose of each person in Abuja and I found out the only person who was needed in Abuja was me.”
