Let’s rescue Nigeria now or perish, By Peter Obi

The keynote speaker said so many things that are pertinent. He showed how great our country can be even when so many people doubt whether anybody will be able to turn it around, because it seems to be in a very bad shape. If you look at the dozen fragile states in the world, Nigeria is there. So, we’ve now cracked virtually all indices of a failed. Nigeria is no longer in control of its territory because nobody is sure now.

In my consultation with people, the big men are asking you, is this place safe? I say, I came into this man’s house and he has about 30 policemen and he’s asking me if this place is safe. So, what will happen to people who don’t even have one policeman if this man will start with, this place is not safe.

If you ask chairman (Ahmed Makarfi, former Governor of Kaduna State, Chairman of the occasion), he’ll tell you the same thing, because it’s not safe. I was in Niger on Sunday and they said 12 local governments have been taken over by bandits. The children have stopped school. Now this is a major thing that spells a failed state – when you’re no longer in control of your territory and security of your place. Everybody now lives in fear.

So, potentially, we have everything. We have gold, we have oil – even the Central Bank Governor, said one of the major problems is massive stealing of our oil. Then I ask, who are the people stealing this oil? Are they foreigners? What type of statement is this coming from government? Somebody is stealing our thing and we don’t know. Somebody steals our oil, then the one they’re able to sell, they steal the money. There must be something wrong.

But cumulatively, all we’re experiencing today is the collective effect of leadership failure over the years. And that’s what Gbenga Daniels touched on. It’s not about people making noise. We’ve seen so many good written papers and people have told us so many nice things. But, where are we today? We’re facing an uncertain future – a future I’m sure that all of you are worried about.

I’ve pleaded with people to stop comparing us with UK and US. Let us go and compare ourselves with countries with comparative trajectories and we’ll see how badly we’re doing. You can’t compare us with US. The US with a per-capita of $50,000 cannot be compared with Nigeria with $2,000. it’s like a businessman. The biggest state in America, California, has a GDP of $3.2trillion, eight times Nigeria GDP. So, we cannot compare. You can’t compare us with Britain with a per capita of almost $48,000. if you have $48,000 and I have $2,000, you know what you can do? You can decide that the price of an item is $3,000 and you remain $45,000 and my own is gone.

But, look at other countries like Ghana. Go to places like Bangladesh, Thailand, Vietnam, compare and see how badly we’ve done. Following what the keynote speaker talked about, we have everything, but we lack one thing – leadership. Everything can be destroyed with poor leadership no matter what it is. After all, who has the highest number of oil deposits today? I’m sure you know a country in South America – Venezuela, has more oil deposits than Nigeria. But what is happening today? Poor leadership. Poor leadership can destroy everything. And that is the problem of Nigeria.

But why do we have that poor leadership? Because the recruitment process is poor. People say vote-buying – but I’ve been able to contest elections and won without giving anybody one naira. It is the people – all of us here are part of it. We don’t want to get involved – it’s not our business. So, it became a case of where lunatics took over the asylum. It has happened. The quality of leadership is poor, the selection process is poor.

People are contesting elections now and nobody is asking about their background, nobody is asking questions. Nobody is asking where they were doing, where they’re coming from, what were they doing 25 years ago and they’re now going about promising us that they’ll make one naira equal to one dollar. This is somebody who has never created wealth in his life, has never managed anything in life, has never done anything in his life and he’s promising you. By the time it starts, it’s going to be a mess.

Please, let all of us get involved – ask questions. Let’s look at what the person has managed before – his own private life, his business and everything. If he has been a local government chairman or a governor, let’s look at it. Let’s look at his character, his behaviour. This is because, when we talk about the wealth of a nation, it’s not just about the money.

It’ll surprise you that the greatest contributor to the GDP and growth of a nation is the intangible asset, which is law and order, behaviour and character of the leaders, because if you have a leader who talks anyhow, he can cause trouble like we’re seeing in Ukraine now. It’s simple. You must have a leader who is competent, has the capacity and his behaviour and character can match everything. We have a country that is so divided now that we must have someone who can understand the law and show compassion and bring everybody together.

We need orderliness. Today the GDP of all the western world is controlled, about 60 per cent by intangible assets – law and order. There is nothing in the western world except that you can go home and sleep, except that you’re sure that if you call the police, that if you go to court, somebody will answer you. These are the things that make them tick. These are the things we need to look into in order to hire the best people to manage us out of this.

We must be able to bring leaders that will generate and know what development is all about. That’s what the keynote speaker said. Because, here, we seem not to know what development is all about. So, you ask somebody, what did you do and he’ll say I built bridges, I built flyovers. Flyover to where? Where is that road going to? There is already a clear, defined, accepted development yardstick – human development indices. Invest in it. Invest in education, invest in health, bring people out of poverty.

You wake up in the morning in this country and somebody says, we have a revenue problem. Why won’t you have a revenue problem? You have almost 100million people living in poverty and you want them to pay tax. From where? They’ve not eaten food. It’s like somebody going to the bank to cash money when he has not paid anything in.

You have to pay in first, so you can have a withdrawal note. But the government wants to withdraw without paying in. Where did you invest in education, where did you invest in health, where did you pull people out of poverty? The keynote speaker said people are looking for money to start small businesses, but it’s not there.

You borrow money! Nobody has seen anything like what we’re seeing now in terms of debt. I hasn’t happened anywhere, where somebody’s company is valued for 100million and he went and borrowed at 500million and his company is now valued at 90million. It hasn’t happened anywhere. And nobody is asking any question. And the same people who borrowed it want to continue, so that by the time they borrow another one you may have just 10million left.

In 2010, Nigeria’s debt was below $30billion, because PDP under Makarfi had paid off our debts. Because they paid off everything we had below $30billion and the per capita then was $2,250 with a GDP of about $3.5billion. But in 2021, our debt was over $100bllion and per capita of $2,000. So, what happened to the money we borrowed? The people are telling us, we used it for capital projects. Where are the capital projects? What is the impact of the capital project on growth? What did you do with the money. More people have been thrown into poverty.

As at 2014, the working population of Nigeria, was about 60million. But today, it’s about 36million. So, more people have lost their jobs. We’ve become one of the highest places of unemployment. We have the highest mortality rate, our poverty rate is the highest in the world. So, what happened to this money? And when you ask that question, people are looking. That’s why I said, compare us with countries that work.

In Bangladesh, because I don’t want to talk about China again, because they’ve since passed us, had a per capita of $780, when we’re $2,250 with a GDP of $115billion, theirs was about $43billion. Today Bangladesh GDP is about $345billion and their per capita is $2,015. So, they’ve tripled and their debt has also tripled to $117billion. But you can see that the money they borrowed, was invested.

In our own, it was consumed, because we hired people, like the chairman said, who write good papers  and in the end, we’re finished. My contribution today is let us know that we’ve no other country. We’ve no other place to go. We all collectively have to be involved to stop this abuse. I say this everyday that the country we abuse, the nation we abuse, will take its revenge on all of us.

Text of Peter Obi’s address at ‘Freedom Online’ Lecture.