The immediate past governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi has said the nation’s economy may not improve in 2017 because of the attitude of the incumbent administration to the crisis.
Obi disclosed this in an interview with CNBC Africa on Monday. He said Nigeria is like a faulty vehicle which does not necessarily needs another driver but a quick fixing of the engine to get it working again.
In his words: “For me, I don’t think the economy will be better in 2017 because I have not seen the attention that is required for the situation we find ourselves.
“Where we are now is like having a car with which has an engine knock, and we are still busy talking about changing the driver. There is no engine in place; even if you bring in the best driver in the world, he is not going to move the car.
“We need to talk about how do we fix the engine of this vehicle, and that engine is the economy. Until we fix it, then we can talk about the driver, whether there is a good driver or bad driver.”
The former governor called on the political class to bury their different ideologies and come together with the aim of charting the way forward for the Nigerian economy.
“Considering where we are, we need to have in all these sectors, crisis manager to deal with the situation, We need to pull everybody together, it’s no longer a party matter, it is no longer a political matter, it is a survival matter.
“It’s not time to trade blames; it’s not time to dwell in yesterday. If you look at our headlines in our newspapers, the quality of discourse is low, we are still chasing shadows,” Obi said.
TheNewsGuru.com reports that Obi was governor of Anambra State in Nigeria from 17 March 2006 to 2 November 2006, when he was impeached and from 9 February 2007 to 29 May 2007 after his impeachment was overturned.
Although a fresh election was held on 29 April 2007, he was reappointed governor on 14 June 2007 after a court ruling that he should be allowed to complete a four-year term.
He won a 6 February 2010 election for a second term as governor.