Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Mr Peter Obi, has said his government will not continue with the “handout” of sharing formular but implement a production formular where every Nigerians would be productive for positive impacts.
Obi said this on Friday at a Leadership Townhall held at the University of Abuja.
“You must tell of your abilities and you must start to pull people out of poverty. The only way to do this is to move your country today from consumption to production. Nigeria can be self-sufficient on food production and change its trajectory of a wasteful economy largely dependent on mere sharing allow revenue when it could actually task the federating units to up their games for the growth of the economy.
“Nigeria is not producing anything. We are in a country today that is wasting everybody’s time on sharing. And we want to remove the sharing formula and replace it with Production Formula. We are attacking this country’s production based on factor of employment.
“Bauchi is bigger than Belgium and Gambia combined. Bauchi is 35,000sqkm of land Belgium is 30.9sqkm Gambia is 10.8sqkm if you plus this two, it is less than Bauchi state and they have less population. It means that Bauchi state has more land.
“Nigeria can earn more from Agriculture than from oil. India can feed itself. India has a population of 1.4bn people sitting on a land of 3.2sqkm of land. Nigeria leaves on 1/3 of India land 923,000sqkm of land. India can feed her population. We cannot feed ourselves. It cannot continue,” Obi said.
He also said that he would not share any part of Nigeria’s land with any kind of terrorists or bandit group.
He said that any group of dissidents open to discussion would be engaged but those who made themselves unavailable would be dealt with.
He said the size of Sambisa forest which is three times the size of Israel would suffice for use, as farmland, as against the security problem it has become to the nation and that the Sambisa forest could become a revenue generation area for Nigeria with it as a factor of production, especially in Agriculture.
On removal of subsidy, he said that if given the opportunity, he would remove subsidy the first day in office because they have turned it into a huge racket of corruption which he would stop.
Speaking earlier, the Vice Chancellor of the University, Prof. Abdul-Rasheed Na’Allah, said the motive of the gathering was intellectual engagement.
The Vice Chancellor said those aspiring to govern the people must be scrutinized, made to answer questions and wondered why Nigeria is where they are if not for poor political leadership which is everything.