2023: Nigeria needs visionary, competent leadership — Peter Obi

…Says election’ll be about capacity, not tribe, connection

Abimbola Abatta

To address the teeming challenges bedevilling Nigeria, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, said the country needs visionary, competent leadership.

This is even as Obi said 2023 elections will not be about connections, tribe, or religion, but about competence, character and commitment to deliver.

Obi stated this on Monday at the 2022 Annual General Meeting of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) at the Eko Hotels in Lagos.

Speaking at the 2022 NBA AGM themed “BOLD Transitions,” the former Anambra State Governor said Nigeria’s problems are results of accumulated leadership failure.

His words: “Out of 200 million Nigerians, 60 percent is supposed to be working. So, it implies 120 million Nigerians working, but today, Nigerians that are working are under 60 million.

“We are in a physical mess, total physical mess because of all this. Between January this year and April, the total revenue of the federal government of Nigeria is N1, 630,000,000,000 but expenditure is four trillion, N4,720,000,000, 000. If you minus this, we have a deficit of N3,100,000,000,000.

“How did we come here? It is the effect of leadership failure over the years. What are we going to do to come out of this?

“You need to have a visionary, articulated, competent leadership.

“The elections we are going to have next year will not be about tribe nor religion, not connections, not entitlement, but about character, competence, capacity and commitment to deliver.”

Meanwhile, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar and the vice-presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Kashim Shettima, were present at the event yesterday.