Former governor of Anambra state, Peter Obi has said that the future of Nigeria rests on a massive investment in education.
Obi made the assertion while speaking at the NEDG/BON Vice-Presidential Debate which held in Abuja on Friday, December 14.
The Vice-Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) said that the more Nigeria invests in education, the more the economy will grow to the benefit of its citizens.
He said: “We will aggressively invest in education, I have done this even as a governor of a state when I took Anambra from being number 28 to number 1” in the nation.
According to Obi the PDP if elected in 2019, will take ICT serious stressing that Nigeria needs to invest money in her future.
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Further addressing the economic issue besetting the nation, Obi noted lamented the increasing rate of unemployment saying: “As long as we don’t create jobs and have the number of unemployed youths that we have today, we are going to have a crisis.”
Obi also spoke about Nigeria’s ease of business; he said that the government needs to operate as a business and do the right things.
Taking the issue of Ports as an example, the ex-governor said the Nigerian Ports Authority for years “looked at the expansion that is coming and decided not to invest, they are using money wrongly.
“Nigerian Ports Authority is the only port in the world that has an office, even guest house outside its country of operation.
“They are not investing money in the business,” Obi opined.
Disagreeing with Obi on the issue of investing wrongly, Vice President who also took part in the BON/NEDG debate blamed the PDP for the gross of the declined encountered in the Nigerian economy.
“I thought the candidate of the PDP will at least acknowledge that while under the PDP, we fell 64 places down on the World Bank index.
“Under us, we have moved 24 places up in the ease of doing business in 18 months.”
He said that the PDP should not be able to keep a straight face and talk about all that has gone wrong in the Nigerian economy.
“Why we are where we are today is because of 16 years of mismanagement of resources that is the problem that is why we are here today.”
Speaking on what the present government is doing to salvage the damage done over the years, Osinbajo said: “we are investing in infrastructure now with 60 percent less, we are doing far more with less.”
