Former Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi has taken another swipe at President Bola Tinubu’s administration, arguing that after nearly two years in office, his government has failed to make any meaningful impact on Nigerians.
Speaking on Arise Television’s Prime Time on Tuesday, 1 April 2025, Obi insisted that if he were the president, Nigerians would have seen significant improvements in key sectors.
“The President that is there today, how many years has he spent? Two years, and you could see where we are. That means you can change things in two years,” he said.
“If I was there, you would have seen a considerable change in critical areas. I would have tackled corruption head-on. I would have reduced the cost of governance, and you would see it, people would feel it.”
Obi criticised the government’s spending priorities, saying borrowed funds should be invested in essential services like healthcare rather than unnecessary projects.
“Our primary healthcare today, 70 per cent (of it) are not functional, and we spent over ₦35 billion on a conference centre. Which conference? Who is coming for the conference?” he queried. “You need to invest your money properly. You would have been seeing borrowed money invested in critical areas.”
He also pointed to agriculture as an area where Nigeria lags behind, using Bangladesh as an example of how the country could harness its land for large-scale rice production.
“In Bangladesh, a country with 148,000 km² of land, they produce about 60 million metric tons of rice, and us, with over six times that size of land, cannot do 10 per cent of that,” Obi said.
On economic policies, the former Anambra governor agreed with Tinubu’s move to devalue the naira but criticised its execution, saying the government failed to ensure productivity before floating the currency.
“There’s nothing wrong in devaluation, but I would have allowed the naira to float in an organised manner,” he stated.
“The idea of devaluing your currency, allowing it to float, is that you have productivity so you can export, so people can come and buy.”
He warned that floating the naira without boosting local production only worsens economic challenges, describing it as a “double whammy” for the country.
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