2022023: LAFIA ERUPTS IN ECSTASY AS PETER OBI COMMENCES CAMPAIGN
By Joy Okosieme
Lafia, the capital of Nasarawa State in North Central Nigeria was beehive of excitement on Saturday, October 29 as Peter Obi, presidential candidate of Labour Party kick-started his campaign for election as Nigeria’s fifth democratically elected president since the return to constitutional governance in 1999.
Obi, a former Governor of Anambra State noted for prudent management of state resources, has elicited mass following over his promise to end waste and corruption in government.
Addressing a huge crowd of supporters and party faithful, Obi urged them to take a firm stand against poverty deprivation and pervasive insecurity by voting out the All Progressives Congress(APC), which had not only failed to address these issues but had compounded them.
Imploring the people to vote for him in the February 25, 2023 election, the Labour Party presidential candidate said there was a pressing need to prise Nigeria free from the choking grip of the ruling party as it had failed to address issues of prime concern to Nigerians.
“If government of Peter Obi and Datti come into power, we will make sure that people go back to school, we will create job for our youths. Support us, we mean well for you; we are young like you and we are ready for the job to form an energetic government,” he said.
To Nigerian youths long marginalized in the Nigerian political process driven largely by a gerontocratic class, he offered hope:
“We will support youths because today Nigerian youths don’t have a hope, we will solve your problems.
“Go and start campaigning for us. Don’t listen to those people that stole your money. The money given to you is your money, that is why you are hungry, that is why you don’t have jobs. We will give you back your jobs and we will give you a country you will be proud of”, he said.
Obi said the Labour Party, which is a true representative of the Nigerian people was poised to re-engineer Nigeria and birth a new nation different from the current one bogged down by insecurity, intolerance, economic crisis and multiple social maladies.
In the place of these undesirable reality, Obi said his government would revitalize Nigeria’s economy through well articulated policies on agriculture, emphasis on development of social and physical infrastructure, reduction of waste and elimination of corruption.
He said the first. step toward realizing this would be to secure the country by ending the wave of insecurity that driven Nigerians from their farms and destroyed their means of livelihood.
