2023 election: Why I am yet to release manifesto – Peter Obi

The presidential candidate of the Labour Party and former governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi, has explained why he is yet to release his manifesto for the 2023 election.

Obi, a former governor of Anambra State, told BBC that he is waiting for the positions of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) before releasing his manifesto.

The presidential candidate, who is enjoying a wave of support from young Nigeria, has been subjected to criticisms over a purported delay in releasing his plans for the country should he get elected as President Muhammadu Buhari’s successor in the 2023 presidential election.

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Obi shrugged off the criticisms, saying Nigeria has alot of ideas and documented policy programmes which had been rendered ineffective due to lack of implementation and political will to do them.

The director-general of Peter Obi presidential campaign, Doyin Okupe, had disclosed that the Labour Party’s manifesto will be unveiled ‘sometime next week’ adding that it will be different from that of other political parties.

Okupe, who spoke at a Channels Television programme, stated that the core focus of Obi’s manifesto is on how to move Nigeria from consumption to production.

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“This our manifesto is going to address exactly what we intend to do and to some extent how we will do it. It will clearly lay out a simple language that everybody can follow and we also intend to translate it into languages that Nigerians can easily identify with,” Okupe said

Amid calls for succession in the southeast, Obi noted that he is a firm believer in Nigeria and that he has a different solution of dialogue from the “agitations across the country”.

Obi said Nigeria’s top priority is insecurity as it has become an existential one “that must be dealt with head-on decisively”.

“If you deal with it today, you deal with inflation because farmers would go back to farms and that would reduce food inflation,” Obi said.