Prove Datti corrupt, I’ll renounce my ambition ― Obi

The Presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi has vowed to drop his ambition for the presidency of Nigeria if anyone can prove that he or his running-mate, Datti Baba-Ahmed have corruptly gained from the government of Nigeria either at the federal or subnational level.

Peter Obi, on Monday, said this while fielding questions at the Chatham House, London, United Kingdom.

According to him, the challenges of health and power in Nigeria would be dealt with, within his administration if Nigerians gave him the mandate come February 2023, as he would declare war on electricity in the country to drive the economy.

His words: “We will fight corruption, Datti has the record of being the only national assembly member who refused to buy property of the government when it was offered to all national assembly members. You can go and look at his record, if you find anywhere he puts himself in a transactional position that he has compromised his position, I will stop running.”

He continued that what brought himself and Datti together was the desire to bring a change to Nigeria and promote good governance guided by the rule of law for all other things to fall in place.

He said their meeting was centred around “How can we save our people?” This, according to him “is how we came together, and we came back and said, we will work as a team and we will solve this problem.

Obi said: “I have governed a state for eight years, go and check the record, I have challenged everybody, I am the only governor, till today whom the day I left office I was not owing salaries or pension or gratuity or any contractor or any supplier and I left money in three banks in Nigeria which I say every day, Access Bank of Nigeria, Fidelity bank of Nigeria and Diamond bank of Nigeria.”

On power, Obi said: “Nations of our size have done it. How did India with 1.4 billion people cover the issue of health, how did Indonesia cover that? If other nation has done it well, we have to learn from them, there is nothing wrong in learning from them if you do not know how to do it.

“Let me assure you what we have been campaigning on, in our campaign we have heard them say, we do not have structure. That is the structure we are trying to destroy, the structure of criminality, that Nigeria has been held captive. The structure that has impoverished Nigeria, it will not be there, we will dismantle it.

“We are going to turn around the power sector, Nigeria generates about 60,000 megawatts of electricity for 200 million people. South Africa is the second biggest in the terms of economy, 60,000 million people generate about 50,000mw and South Africa in the last two to three years has declared a state of emergency in power, and said anybody can generate about 100mw without license.

“So, somebody who has 60,000MW of electricity is declaring a state of emergency, what will 200 million people with generation of 5,000 to 6,000MW do? War. I am going to declare war on power and solve it. Anybody who stands in the way, so be it.

“Bringing back foreign investors is very simple, foreign investors are like bees and honey, how do we create honey the way bees will find its place is very simple. Foreign capital is scared of corruption, is scared of bad policies, is scared of where there is no rule of law.

“You need to put in a regulatory environment that makes it conducive. That is at the heart of what Datti and I stand for, we will build up a tangible asset of securing the country, we will make sure that we govern through rule of law.”

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