Former Anambra State governor, Peter Obi, has advised the political class to focus on solving the current economic crisis instead of making political permutations towards 2023.
He made the remark on Sunday during an appearance on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics.
According to Obi, who was the Peoples Democratic Party’s vice-presidential candidate in 2019, the 2023 elections has no impact on people’s current livelihoods, which have been put under dire circumstances by the coronavirus pandemic.
He also accused President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration of not adequately preparing the country for the impact of the pandemic.
“Every other country is discussing the recession and how to pull their people out of poverty,” he said., adding, “So what we should do now is to concentrate on the monetary and fiscal policies to start pulling people out of poverty.
“If you see what happened with recent protests, you could see that we are heading into a problem. And I want our energy to be concentrated in that problem. The politicians, the class where I belong, should do more seriously, across party lines, to be able to arrest the situation before it gets out of hand.
“For me, it is in discussing how do we put food on people’s table. Elections will come and we can see how to select the best. But let’s deal with the recession we have just entered before 2023.”
Obi also criticised the current administration over its inability to cut government expenses, adding that its borrowing strategy fuels corruption.
“The cost of governance is not acceptable,” he said, stating further that “there is too much waste.
“This recession is going to be worst than in 2016 because the monies we borrowed then were not properly invested.
“What we need now is to go into a vigorous regime of formulating implementable and measurable monetary and fiscal policies to drive ourselves out of the present situation.”
According to Obi, Nigerian leaders now “need to take very difficult decisions” if they are to turn the tide and put the economy back on the track of positive growth.