My government will replace sharing formula with production formula – Obi

Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Mr Peter Obi has said his government would not share any part of Nigeria’s land with any kind of terrorists or bandit group.

Obi who addressed Nigerians at the University of Abuja, Friday, said the first step of development of the Nigerian State was to first unite it and take responsibility for the people and their property within the geographical space Nigeria occupies.

According to Obi who was severally cheered by the crowd, 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.

Obi said The 60,000-plus Sambisa forest could become a revenue generation area for Nigeria with it as a factor of production, especially in Agriculture.

His words: “To have a government structure that addresses the problem. That is what we call leadership and Datti and I have said we will deal with that issue.

“We are not going to give you any excuse as a government. It all stops at our desk and we will deal with it.

“We will discuss with those who are available and those who are not we will deal with them. They are not your government,” he emphasized.

He continued that “One person must be in charge and we cannot share governance with any other person.

“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.”

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The Labour Party Presidential candidate said 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. Indi can feed her population. We cannot feed ourselves. It cannot continue,” he decried.

“Niger state is poor, Borno state is poor, Taraba state is poor. These states can feed themselves, feed Nigeria and export,” the LP presidential candidate maintained.

He said he remains the unbeatable candidate because he is the most qualified to solve the major question of leadership and national growth.

According to him: “I am contesting this election because I am the most qualified to lead the nation”. 

Obi said his vice presidential candidate, Datti-Baba Ahmed was not a man whose record cannot be verifiable. “Go and google it, you know his age. The school he went to. And his details,” he said.