A presidential aspirant on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Peter Obi has said that it was wrong borrowing money for consumption.
The former Governor of Anambra State asserted that borrowing was not wrong but the money must be used for production.
Speaking in an interview with an International Television station, Arise, Obi said:
“I am not against borrowing. You can borrow money. Businesses and countries have done well by borrowing. There is nothing wrong in borrowing. It is what you do with borrowing. You just borrow for production not for consumption. If you borrow for production, you will get it right.
“This country started on the right footing. The first loan ever requested by this country was in June 1964, by Tafawa Balewa. Go and read what he wrote to the World Bank while requesting to borrow $82 million – to build Kainji Dam to produce 760 mega watts in 1964. Imagine if we have been going on that trajectory till today, imagine where we would be.”
While speaking on the issue of insecurity in the country, Obi had these to say:
“When you deal with Security, there are two forms of security. There is what you call Natural Security and Defensive Security. The natural security is that people must have food on their table. If you don’t know where the next meal will come from you’re a tool for anything that is wrong. So, you have to plan to pull people out of poverty.
“All these banditry you’re seeing, kidnapping and all that, the agitation, everything is cumulation of leadership failures of not investing in human beings by making sure they have a means of livelihood.
“Now they don’t have a means of livelihood, they’re trying to take revenge on the society which will eventually take revenge on them. So what they need to do is aggressively start pulling, genuinely start pulling people out of poverty. It has been done everywhere in the world.
On defensive security, he said, “Security is not something you wait until there’s an issue you start reacting. You need to procure necessary equipments, employment of necessary manpower. Nigeria is the only country I know with this big size with one single policing body. No, shouldn’t be. It should be policing at all levels.”
