Peter Obi, The Labour Party (LP) Presidential Candidate, Interviewed On CNN

The Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate, Peter Obi, on Friday, appeared as a guest on the American-based television station, CNN.

See extracts from his interview below;

On the Voting pattern;

He said the Nigerian elite were the people who advance the biases to harm the country’s development aspirations.

"That is what it was yesterday. And that is our problem, because we have been able to elect people based on ethnicity, religion, ‘my turn’, connection, or one form of bias or the other, which brought us to where we are — or structure, which I always say is structure of criminality,” he said.

"That is what we want to dismantle now and ensure that the next election is based on character, capacity, competence, commitment to do the right thing.

“Nigeria is not just in a physical mess; it is at the last stage to collapsing. The people in the north don’t have a secured place; they don’t have good roads; they don’t buy bread cheaper than people in the south. So [it is with] people in the south.

“So, all you hear about ethnicity, religion, connection, my turn – are elites’ conspiracy to keep Nigeria underdeveloped. But now we have reached the edge. We can no longer continue this way,” he added.

On the Economy;

"They have to deal decisively with the issue of security. It is impacting negatively on our economy today. You have to deal with it head-on, because you have to get your farmers to go back to farm and start ensuring that, (for instance) the vast lands of the north are invested and cultivated on,” he said.

"You have to start pulling people out of poverty as quickly as possible. You have to reduce aggressively the cost of governance and deal with the issue of corruption,” he said.

On the Private sector participation in Nation building;

"There is no reason why we should not encourage the private sector to build refineries and operate them. And they are not rocket science. You can use today to decide to remove fuel subsidies and use the resources to support critical areas of production,” Mr Obi said.

On Insecurity;

"The growing insecurity in the country can be “dealt with” by re-organising the security architecture and ensuring multi-level policing which demands that state police be adopted in the country.

Mr Obi said recruiting and equipping more personnel into Nigeria’s security force as well as properly motivating them are central to fighting insecurity in the country.

On the Timeline to solve the country’s numerous challenges;

Nigeria’s problems can’t be solved overnight, says Peter Obi on CNN.

He said, it would take a leader that possesses the requisite capacity and competence to solve the dilemmas in the country.

He said, “you are not going to solve it overnight, but there will be a clear, visible, measurable attempt to deal with it. And they are things that are solvable. They can be dealt with decisively.