According to Mr. Peter Obi, the presidential candidate for the Labour Party, the nation needs a stingy leader to progress in all areas.
Recall that Sens. Ahmed Bola Tinubu of the All Progressive Congress and Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) both criticised him for being stingy, saying that the nation did not need someone like that.
Obi went to a Town Hall meeting with Anambra Traditional Rulers at the government house in Awka on Tuesday as part of his campaign tour. He said that he owed no one an apology for being cheap and that he is the youngest, fittest, and most qualified candidate out of the four most popular presidential candidates.
People like us would protest that it is our turn and should be taken into account if this were about turns, but it is about capacity.
“The work of a president is about bringing the country together and reconstructing it, not about retirement loans or any other kind of settlement.”
“The work and the presidency of our country deserve a frugal person,” they said. “They claimed I’m a stingy man.” I say they didn’t say I was excessive or that I embezzled public money.
“When you look at me and my running mate, you will notice that we are young compared to the other candidates, who are older.” “Our National Chairman is in his forties, while the National Chairman of the other candidates is around seventy or older,” continued Obi.
Nigeria requires a strong and vibrant president who is in tune with the trending and modern style of leadership so that our country can be counted among the world’s great nations, he said.”When you talk about qualifications, I am the most qualified and the youngest among them.”
At the Town Hall meeting with the youths, Obi said that his administration would deal with the issue of university teachers going on strike and that the revenue from petroleum that people are sharing is almost equal to the amount the lecturers are asking for.
Why are our universities striking? There is no reason for that since people are only interested in sharing oil money and are not actually generating anything; the money that they are stealing is about equivalent to the sum that might be used to improve our universities and educational system.
Obi went on to say that Sen. Yusuf Datti, his running mate, owns two internationally renowned universities that are operational and that there is absolutely no reason why the universities owned by the nation can’t be operational as well.
Speaking on behalf of the monarchs, Igwe Sunday Okafor of the Okpuno tribe bemoaned the fact that former presidents of Nigeria had a tendency to travel abroad for medical care, arguing that Nigerians did not require this type of leader. He noted that the cost of such trips had been a drain on the nation’s finances.
Okafor said that only God could decide who the next leader of the country would be, but he said that the Traditional Rulers hoped that God would choose Obi in the general election on February 25.
Tribune
