Re: 2023: On Peter Obi, Let us Verify!

The above tilted is a hollow article from one Mr Kolawole Johnson in The Cable of August 10, 2022 – characteristically adding his own quota to a self-activated muddy whirlpool, in the camp of those unleashed like blindfolded artillery to attack His Excellency Peter Obi, so as to keep eating from the stable of a tabloid owned by the presidential candidate of APC, Sen. Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

When we at POEM decide to respond, we do not premise on the peculiar phrase that “ordinarily we should have ignored such ranting”. No, we do not dismiss such attacks as not meriting our response, because falsehood has no place in any decent society, nor should be allowed to fly beyond the convoluted mind of a man struggling on all limbs to make attempt at occupying Aso Rock come 2023.

Before we go further, let’s clear just one particular issue, where the hatchet writer misrepresented facts by lying in a bogus manner that HE Peter Obi left Anambra State with the people more impoverished than when he came. We will be detailed here for sake of verification.

Here we go…

On assuming office, Obi being a people-oriented leader, went straight to the grassroots while planning on how to alleviate and start lifting people out of poverty.

To understand the projectile, he did a Poverty Mapping of the state. Having identified the poorest local government areas, which then were Anambra-West, Anambra-East, Anyamelum, Orumba North, Orumba South, Awka-North, Awka-South, Ogbaru, his administration then made to eradicate poverty in those LGAs and consequently the state.

He then churned out poverty reduction policies and programmes to tackle poverty head-on.

FADAMA III Programme, a major avenue for providing capital and equipment support to hundreds of rural dwellers engaged in agro-related activities was fully activated in the state.

Capital support was also given to thousands of the less-privileged, particularly women, widows, the physically challenged, as well as care-givers of orphans and vulnerable children which enabled many to expand their trade, many others to start petty trading and the rest went into small-scale farming.

Revolving loans were made available to hundreds of women cooperative groups to establish small-scale Agro-based businesses such as poultry farms, fish ponds and pig farms.

Sundry equipment, including palm oil processing machines, palm kernel-cracking machines, food processing machines, soap making machines and electrical generating sets to power them, were distributed to co-operative groups to establish cottage Industries.

A variety of skill acquisition training sessions were organized for the unemployed (especially the indigent, physically challenged, women and youths), who had been subsequently empowered with micro-enterprises equipment such as computers, generators, hair dryers, sewing machines, shoe-making machines, welding machines, vulcanizing machines, motorcycles, wood work/carpentry tools, barber’s shop tools, ovens, cookers, etc. to make them self-reliant through self-employment.

Poverty reduction, if not complete eradication, was also vigorously pursued through massive expansion of rural roads, especially in remote food producing areas, thus opening up such strategic areas of the state with good access roads.

This enabled the Obi Government to send the much-needed agricultural inputs to such remote rural areas. It also enabled rural farming to evacuate food items and other agricultural produce to urban markets, thereby making food available and agriculture more profitable. Anambra State under Obi was reputed to have the best network of roads in Nigeria, especially in rural areas, mainly because of Obi’s serious determination to alleviate poverty in the state.

He also instituted a scheme for empowering indigent citizens above 75 years. This he did by paying them a monthly stipend of N5,000. It is instructive to note that Gov. Obi made funds available for such payment up to end of 2015, almost two years after he left office. He equally commenced the implementation of Millennium Development Goals, MDGs’ Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) scheme with 2,250 poor households in each of five communities in five selected LGAs of the state as pilot. And he used extra N500 million to extend to the remaining LGAs.

Creation of jobs, especially for young people, was another major weapon in the fight against poverty. The Obi Administration took the bull by the horn in this direction by employing over 7,000 people and setting aside more than N3 billion for their salaries from 2014 to 2015.

The Administration equally deployed the sum of N6.5 billion for employment and training of over 3,000 teachers for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, STEM Education in partnership with the World Bank.

Commending poverty reduction efforts by Anambra State, Dr Magnus Kpakol, Coordinator of National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP) said: “Governor Obi was the first governor to visit my office to discuss how to fight poverty in his state, and remains determined and dogged by initiating effective economic empowerment programmes.”

Note that by the time Obi left office, Naira to Dollar was exchanging at 150 to 1.

Can somebody tell Mr Kolawole to GO AND VERIFY?

Mr Kolawole rode contradictorily on his badly sketched attack on the principle of “political culture”, but inadvertently ended up attacking his pay master, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, BAT, who Nigerians now see as a very desperate. So his assignment to verify should be quartered on the peculiarr caps of his Oga, for which design is becoming anathema to anything Nigerians want to see at this stage of evidently collapsed Nigeria; a situation brought by the party he helped foster on Nigerians.

Let us help the writer of the article being responded to by taking a course in the quotation he handed us in the article and see who graduates with flying colours in the eyes of the people. Hear him: “Political culture is, thus, the composite of basic values, feelings, spirits, and knowledge that underline political progression. In simple terms, the citizens’ [sic] widely shared beliefs, feelings, opinions and emotions affect their political judgements, which inadvertently dictate the direction of political development”. He concluded that “political culture has a way of robbing off on the people to identify with whoever looks like them or appears to have shared in their plans”. Definitely Kolawole shouldn’t see Tinubu in those lines, instead he was obviously talking about Peter Obi as can be seen in the unprecedented support movements following his principles and capacity in political sociology.

Mr Kolawole must have been a poor student of Political Science, if he read such a beautiful course of study at all, and is clearly shallow in comparative political behaviour, to even use concept of class struggle to underscore his attack on Mr Peter Obi, a man of sterling and emulative principles whose first step into the presidential race is to retire for good the culture of money-for-delegates in Nigerian political culture.

Yes, Mr Peter Obi, like the trader he calls himself, was a mainstay while NEXT took off as a family business many years before he became a governor. The oddesy of NEXT started from his room as an undergraduate when he used to go to London and buy goods to sell. This, you can go and verify! But when did Tinubu own the following establishment?
1) Oriental Hotel
2) Falomo Shopping Complex
3) First Nation Airline
4) Lekki Concession Company
5) Apapa Amusement Park
6) Maiyegun Land Project
7) The Nation Newspaper
8) Renaissance Hotel
9) Tejuoso Market (Joint ownership)
10) Ikeja Shopping Mall
11) Radio Continental
12) Alpha Beta
13) Royal Gardens Estate
There is no doubt that there are others and always remember that we did not talk about those outside Nigeria. Subsequently, we shall bring them on. These too, you can go and verify?

Have you ever wondered why Tinubu would do anything to install the executive governors of Lagos State and other APC-controlled states in South West, or remove the like of Akinwunmi Ambode, who disagreed with him about opening Lagos Treasury to his itchy fingers, now unsteady? It isn’t for the love of the people, but political business! Yes, he runs Lagos State as his private business.

For starters, Tinubu’s many assets are state-funded which he coverts using political manipulation. Here are some known ones and their worth: His residence at 26 Bourdillon Road, Ikoyi worth over ₦750 million, a home where Bullion vans onload money to manipulate elections in Lagos State, otherwise derogatorily known as an unofficial branch of Central Bank; a property at Oyinkan Abayomi (formerly Queens) Drive, Ikoyi which is a 5-bedroom detached house. The house is said to worth ₦600 million. He owns the annex of Lagos State Guest House in Asokoro, Abuja. The state government bought it for ₦450 million in 2006, but then transferred to Tinubu due to the pension plan he signed before leaving the office; in Aja, Ibeju-Lekki is a 250-hectare land, initially assigned for building a general hospital, but later handed over to Deji and Wale Tinubu to construct Royal Garden Housing. The property is valued at about ₦40 billion; there is another in Lakowe near Abijo at Ibeju-Lekki . The 1,000 hectares of land was estimated at ₦85 billion. Similar to the above greed, it was given to a Tinubu-owned company to develop a golf course and housing estate.

Or do you want to talk about Atlantic beachfront, an estimated 157 hectares with 2.5km of Atlantic beachfront valued at about ₦15 billion was deprived from Siriwon communities with little compensation. Then there is Ikoyi Estate foreshore which is a 14-hectare Parkview foreshore land that was once reclaimed by Lagos state, but somehow currently owned by Tinubu. Also in the list is Strabag yard beside the Lagos State Secretariat at Alausa, Ikeja

The avarice continues in the hotel and construction industries with Oriental Hotel at an estimated cost of ₦45 billion, while his construction company, HITECH has cornered all the road construction jobs in Lagos and other APC States in the South West. And this is why he still fights to control those states. The mind boggling grab-and-eat of Tinubu is unequaled in the concept of primitive accumulation and here Kolawole Johnson points a finger at Peter Obi who came from a successful business family and started his trading while he was a student at University of Nigeria at a time Tinubu had finished changing his identity in US on account of drug related complicity. This is what you should verify and question is how devastating would it be to hand over the estate called Nigeria to such an insatiable kleptomaniac crusader. We ask you Mr Kolawole Johnson.

While you ruminate, we promise that we will respond further to ascertain the physical and mental suitability of your principal to lead over 200 million in this era of rapidly developing world. Before then, go to Anambra State and verify all we said about the man that gives you nightmares.

PO Express Media, POEM responding.

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