Move Nigeria from consumption to productin;
Secure and Unite our dear nation, Nigeria;
Embark on comprehensive security sector and governance reforms;
Prioritize human capital development and Human Development Index (HDI) value through robust investments in STEM education, health and infrastructural development, with emphasis on wealth creation and distribution;
Engineer the transition of Nigeria from fossil fuel dependency to climate and eco-friendly energy use;
Pursue holistic poverty eradication, strengthening of institutional capacity nationally and erase Nigeria’s categorization as the poverty capital of the world;
Improve access to financing and tackling unemployment and human insecurity;
Ensure that in policy and practice, governance will be made more inclusive, cost-effective, transformative and less transactional
Ensure that our diversity will be leveraged to give women and youths, the aged and persons with disabilities, unfettered voice in governance, and a renewed sense of patriotism and faith in Nigeria
Ensure that Nigeria is progressively better governed through legislative, executive and judicial reforms, so that the Constitutional separation of powers among the three arms of government is properly followed and the three tiers of government allowed to function independently and jointly for a more inclusive and sustainable Nigeria.
The new Nigeria we seek will be a United and Secure Nigeria that symbolizes the spirit, letters and exhorting ethos of our national anthem – “one nation bound in freedom, peace and unity” where “peace and justice shall reign.”
Personally, I will seek to recreate a nation where the rich and the poor are equitably and fairly represented; where Citizens’ interests will supersede political interests and the existing trust gap between the government and the governed will be reduced to the barest minimal.
Securing and Uniting Nigeria requires a steady and trusted hand. My name is Peter Obi, I am running to be the next President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and this is my commitment and promise to Nigerians. So help me God.
My governance principles, priority projects and programmes shall be anchored on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Purposeful leadership for:
1. Securing and Uniting Nigeria
2. Effective legal and institutional reforms
3. Production-centered growth for food security and export
4. Leapfrogging Nigeria from oil to 4IR
5. Expanding physical infrastructure through market-driven reforms (prosperity paradox)
6. Human capital development that empowers competitiveness
7. Robust foreign policy that restores Nigeria's strategic relevance
The government that comes to power in May 2023 will confront a daunting array of domestic and external challenges. Although the domestic policy challenges have accumulated over time, the lack of adequate public policy responses has made them worse, with a devastating impact on national unity, social cohesion, public trust in government, and economic performance. At the same time, the international context has become both uncertain and demanding, especially for developing countries like Nigeria. The war in Ukraine has injected a high degree of uncertainty with regard to its immediate and long-term implications.
Meanwhile, the economic disruptions wreaked by COVID-19 on international commerce, in particular on global supply chains, as well as international commerce, and commitments such as those relating to climate change and sustainable development goals (SDGs) have added a layer of complexity and challenges which Nigeria must address.
Nigeria is not bereft of good governance ideas and plans. However, a combination of institutional weaknesses and lack of political will meant that various policies and strategies are poorly implemented leading to poor outcomes for the people. Hence, the overall goal of my administration shall be to streamline governance, make it more responsive, transformative, and effective. We must draw a clear distinction between good governance and more governance. Conventional wisdom instructs that more governance is not necessarily good governance, which ultimately is aimed at continuous delivery of services, encouraging constructive criticisms and public feedback for public policy making. Given our history, politics and recent governance challenges; securing, uniting and moving Nigeria forward will require a concerted shift from coercive to consensus building approach. Effective governance derives its impetus and strength not from military capacity or use of force, but from strict adherence to the rule of law, the consolidation of democratic institutions and fulfilling the social contract between the government and the people, all of which confers political and performance legitimacy on any government.
Experience shows that inclusiveness is an essential element in effective public policy making. This means that groups that are often under-represented or not represented in decision-making processes such as women, youth, and the vulnerable are not only consulted but also have their participation sought.
As a President elected by all Nigerians, the buck will stop at my desk. I will be fully responsible for governance and national security decisions and actions undertaken by my administration.
Against this backdrop, my administration has identified seven (7) priorities for governance, even as good governance efforts will not be limited to these priorities only.
We shall:Pursue deliberate and proactive policies that will engender a sense of security. Undertake the most important task of securing Nigeria by putting in place measures that protect lives and property in the country, consistent with section 14 (1) 2b of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) which affirms that “the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.”
Convoke a National Security Summit within 60-days of being sworn-in, with a view to prompting component parts of the federation and national institutions to take ownership of the national security architecture. The Summit will recommend how to achieve greater synergy and complementarities between national security agencies through inclusive security sector reform and governance (SSRG) that aims at imposing a security blanket that dominates the national landscape; adjusting security modalities to address overlaps created by our obligations under the ECOWAS Protocol on the Movement of Persons.
Undertake primary measures to securing Nigerians which will consist of four-parts pursued simultaneously and in tandem: reforming the security sector, with particular emphasis on re-focusing the military towards external threats and border protection and police on internal security threats and law enforcement, swift prosecution of criminals, bandits, and terrorists; enhanced coordination among security agencies; and upholding the rule of law.
Ensure that efforts will be made at re-focusing the military on strictly professional duties of external defense including border protection rather than on civilian police duties.
Improve the functioning and effectiveness of our security agencies particularly the police, by strengthening their civilian oversight as well as increasing their size, strength, equipment, funding, and enhanced professional training.
Strengthen the Ministry of Internal Affairs and transform it into a Ministry of Homeland Security to oversee and coordinate Security threats that are not of military nature. (Not sure if this is necessary as we have the police and Ministry of Police Affairs)
Retrain, expand and equip the counter-terrorism cluster within the Nigerian Police to tackle domestic terrorism, while its military counterpart, the anti-terrorist Special Forces, will focus on fighting foreign terrorists.
Ensure that our administration’s pronouncements, policies, and conduct underpin its strong commitment to fostering a united Nigeria, and the reaffirmation that achieving that objective requires securing the lives and property of Nigerians by creatively managing her diversity.
Make deliberate efforts to re-create a sense of patriotism, shared ownership and responsibilities in nation-building matters. The notion that Nigeria has become a more divided country has arisen from the growing sense of lack of inclusion in appointments to many areas of government.
Ensure transparency and strict adherence to constitutional dictates of federal character in government appointments recognizing that while the distribution of pools of talents may differ across the states in the country, there is no part of the country that does not possess the caliber of persons required for most public positions.
Direct Executive action and push for legislative mandate aimed at formulating a policy on Common Regimentation Emolument Structure Table (CREST) that will harmonize the wages of the federal public servants, so that public servants (whether elected or appointed) are not ranked or earn higher than career civil servants and the military such as those in judiciary, academia, the military and para-military, and federal statutory agencies. Those in these cadres should earn the same salary, and the same prescribed perks and perquisites. This will aid in cutting the cost of governance while promoting amity. It will also address the incessant strikes that bedevil our country, particularly our tertiary institutions.
Resolve the national minimum wage problem by doing away with the extant salary structure and introducing a minimum national hourly rate, by which public and private sector employers must pay employees for hours actually worked and overtime wages where applicable.
Submit an Executive Bill to the National Assembly for a consolidated Occupational Health and Safety Act to revamp and improve on the 2012 Labour, Safety, Health and Welfare (LSHW) Bill.
Make special effort pursuant to the myriad constitutional provisions on the federal character principle, to articulate a policy framework that offers opportunities to all Nigerians to serve in any capacity in the public sectors.
To enhance productivity, ease of doing business, inclusive and sustainable growth of Nigeria, we will:
Critically review the 68 items in the exclusive list of the Federal government with a focus to move some items to the concurrent list.
Pursue robust and aggressive reforms of our paramilitary agencies with a view of improving their synergy and functional effectiveness. For instance, all previous documented reports on police reform will be critically and positively reviewed including the need for establishment of state police with detailed guidelines to checkmate abuse by state governors.
Increase the number of supreme court judges and establish a supreme court in each of the six geo-political zones to enhance the speedy adjudication of cases.
Review all the regulatory agencies of Nigeria with a plan to gradually move away from an institutional approach to objectives-based regulation.
Pursue more inclusion of our customary laws (norms and values) in the contents of our formal law and in the administration of justice. For instance, reforms will be pursued for our traditional laws/rulers to be properly integrated in the formal legal/governance system.
Pursue aggressive digitization of all governance and regulatory services to curb corruption and improve governance outcomes and service delivery.
From Consumption to Production
In consideration of our current ranking as the least competitive economy in Africa with very low total factor productivity (TFP) and export competitiveness index (ECI), We shall, with all sense of urgency, aggressively pursue policies and programmes to enhance the productivity and competitiveness of the 46 sectors of the Nigerian economy.
In addition to our strategic economic development plan, we have reviewed and selectively adopted critical elements in previous economic development plans in designing the bold and innovative development agenda for the new Nigeria that we shall birth.
While acknowledging the critical situation with our food security, we shall, with the required sense of urgency, optimize all the comparative advantages of our 36 states, across all the agricultural value chains through adequate and targeted investments, policies, and programmes. We shall address the identified impediments (banditry, kidnapping, terrorism, desertification, policies) to enhance food self-sufficiency and become a net food exporting nation.
We shall grow the national economy quantitatively and qualitatively by devising programmes for re-skilling our youths to achieve a greater synergy between their skill-sets and our factor endowments; create mandatory national certification for blue-collar artisans; strengthen some of the existing tertiary schools of science and engineering to train the next generation of experts in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) field; and create a venture capital-like fund for young entrepreneurs.
To ensure that the country’s agricultural and manufacturing sectors are compatible with the net zero emissions drive, we shall re-design incentives for present and prospective investors in the industrial sector coupled with an apprentice system to provide a ready-made source of technical expertise in the relevant areas.
It is recognized that high logistics costs at our ports, borders and roads drive the huge trade costs that make Nigeria’s business environment uncompetitive. We shall apply purposeful leadership to dismantle the impediments to free trade and ease of doing business.
We will commit to a zero-based national budget, to overcome the mindset and realities of past non-performing national budgets that are routinely hampered by budgetary deficit overhang. We shall pursue aggressive technology-driven public sector financial management system anchored on well-trained and motivated civil service.
Foster economic policies that are assertive and robust with a view to reducing drastically our debt-servicing ratio. Such policy action is imperative since we are aware that presently (as at April, 2022), Nigeria has about 95 million people living below the poverty line; unemployment rate hovers around 32 percent with the youth component at about 53.4 percent; and tax contributes only about 9 percent to our GDP, well below the African average of 17 percent. Our national situation is made worse given that 116 percent of government revenue is now devoted to debt servicing – that is, 116 kobo out of every Naira (100 kobo) collected by government goes toward servicing of the country’s debt (which means additional 16 kobo is borrowed to service debt.)
Pursue a twin-track policy consisting of using the current earnings from oil to invest in physical and social infrastructure, while gradually weaning the country from dependence on oil and developing capacities to leverage the emerging disruptive digital technologies, automation, IoT, artificial intelligence, robotics, virtual reality, blockchain technology, data science which are at the heart of the fourth industrial revolution.
While the 4IR thrusts us into new dimension of competition, we appreciate that our economy is still grappling with the challenges of fully leveraging the technologies of the second industrial revolution such as electricity and rail network in a multimodal transportation system. While not losing sight of the new demands for competitiveness in the disruptive new technologies, we shall aggressively invest resources in attaining a sustainable electricity, modernizing and expanding our rail transportation network, ensuring that every major city is connected in an inter-modal transportation system. We believe that the industrial transformation that launches the economy into the global value chains must be anchored on traditional electricity and transport infrastructure.
We shall prioritize a structured approach to developing the digital skills of our young population to give them the competitive advantage to receive offshore jobs in the new gig economy, while also improving the efficiency and productivity level of our economy.
Incentivise the refining of the petroleum product market by facilitating privately-owned small and medium scale boutique refineries, with a view to reducing importation of refined petroleum products, and eliminating petrol subsidy regime, which has become a huge burden on the budget.
Our government shall pursue a combination of state-led and public-private initiatives to drive the penetration of broadband infrastructure and information superhighway necessary to empower smart industrialization.
We will put policies in place that gives priority to clean and alternative energy production and consumption. This approach takes cognizance of the fact that the combination of dependence on oil, which is highly capital-intensive, and the weak industrial sector has been a major reason for the high unemployment, especially among the youth.
Ensure that the Federal Government offers meaningful incentives to corporate entities and industries that make discernible efforts to transit to dean and alternative energy.
Create a mandatory National Strategic Reserve of premium motor spirit, aviation fuel, and cooking gas to reduce our national vulnerability to sudden disruptions to the supply of these fuels. (It seems this exists)!!
Strengthen the incentive regimes for new growth industries, in particular culture and creative industry, and technology-oriented industry.
Prosperity Paradox
Revisit existing policies and frameworks with the objective to address current bottlenecks to unlock resources for investment in critical physical and social infrastructure.
Harmonisation of agencies involved in the infrastructure space to address coordination failures that impede effectiveness and efficiency.
We shall explore innovative solutions to address the shortcomings in the current PPP regime. Even the World Bank recognizes this in its recent switch to blended finance as a means to improve PPPs and market-based approaches to infrastructure provisioning in developing countries like ours. Our government shall go beyond blended finance to create mechanisms to scale infrastructure financing, incentivizing not only corporate tax credit application to infrastructure, but also, philanthropy, and community-based infrastructure bonds.
Revision of existing masterplans for infrastructure – gas, transportation, telecommunications (broadband), water, sewage and electricity to create a national multi-utility transport tunnels (MUT) for co-location of subsurface infrastructure development with the objective of achieving cost efficiency and a one-stop solution to right-of-way issues for accelerated infrastructure development.
Upgrade and vigorously further reform the country’s power generation, transmission, and distribution network with the aim of achieving in the next four years, the generation and distribution of not less than 20,000 megawatts. a We shall promote a healthy energy mix that prioritizes renewable and clean energy in line with global trends.
Diversify the funding for our national surface transportation system (Roads, rail, bridges and mass transit) and programmes with the creation of the Highway Trust Fund Account. This account will be funded jointly by federal government, states and private sector on a 60:20:20 ratio. The federal government share will be funded by excise taxes levied on importation of foreign luxury vehicles and diesel fuel used by heavy haulage articulated vehicles. However, in all of these, government participation shall be limited to those areas where there is a clear market failure.
Promulgate legislation mandating the Federal Government to construct fiberoptic backbone connecting all tertiary institutions and state capitals, to enable free broadband access for accelerated digital transformation of the economy.
Deploy Nigeria’s enormous natural gas reserve to drive industrial revolution and provide 24 Hours electricity for the entire nation.
We recognize that our education is not properly oriented to serve our technological and industrial needs. It is also not designed to leverage our local comparative advantages and resource endowments. It has become evident that current digital disruptions have rendered much of our educational systems obsolete or at best redundant. These challenges require a complete revamp of our educational management system from curriculum design to funding mechanism.
Following from these, our government shall prioritize education to serve the following functions: technical and industry relevance; alignment with local comparative advantages and factor endowments; modern skills proficiency, critical thinking, ethical citizenship values, global competitiveness, and talent export.
My government will start with the convocation of a national education summit with the objective to review the curriculum, management and funding of our education. The major objective of this summit would be to come up with a Marshal plan on education that incorporates compulsory technical and vocational skills, sports, entrepreneurship, programming and digital skills from primary to the secondary level.
Achieving the revolution we envisage for the educational sector would require bold initiatives including:
Prioritize scaling up Nigeria’s Human Capital Index (HCI), through significant and sustainable budgetary and extra- budgetary funding of the health, education, sports and social welfare sectors.
Introduce a mandatory “No Child left Behind” educational policy, mindful that Nigeria’s inadequate investment in the social sectors-health, education and housing-has resulted in the current dismal social and demographic trends reflected in low life expectancy, high maternal mortality rate, large number of out-of- school children, huge unmet housing needs as well high youth unemployment.
Undertake an upward review of national budgetary allocation to education 16%, to align it with the global best practices threshold of 15% to 20%, and well beyond the present 5.6% to 8.6% allocation. The increase will be funded by raising the education tax of 26 deriving from profits of all registered companies operating in Nigeria to 3%. The additional 1% will be targeted at profits of gaming and sports betting entities.
Review the legislation guiding the fund access modalities to Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), and the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), to redress prevailing bottlenecks, create greater transparency and ensure increased flexibility, and optimum availability of funds required to meet the educational need of the Nigerian students whom they are meant to serve.
We shall provide health insurance cover to 100 million poorest Nigerians. The fund for this insurance shall come from oil subsidy. The NHIS shall be strengthened to manage this fund in an efficient manner to stimulate private sector driven health provision.
Strive to honour Nigeria’s commitment pursuant to the 2001 African Union Abuja Declaration on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Other related Infectious Diseases, which set the target of allocating at least 15 percent of annual budgets to the improvement of the health sector in African countries.
Put to an end the financial resources- depleting practice of medical tourism, by supporting national teaching hospitals to specialize in niche sectors of medicine, thus enjoying expeditious faculty and facilities enhancement and the attendant Comparative advantage.
My government shall enforce the requirements of the National Gender Policy, aimed at promoting gender equality, affirmative action and good governance across the three tiers of government. We shall enforce a 50:50 ratio in all appointive political positions (50 for men and 50 for women and youths).
We shall incentivize private sector investment in sports and work towards transforming the sports sector into a profitable business to uplift our youths and addressyouth unemployment. The sports ministry shall be strengthened to attract investments through blended financial mechanisms towards developing sporting talents, revamping sporting facilities, and recreation centers across the nation.
Deploy available national resources combined with extant policies and programmes to tackle and reduce the high rate of youth unemployment which presently stand at 53.4%; and also address the high prevalence of our national youth population that are categorized as NEET (not in education, employment or training).
While Africa will remain the focus of our foreign policy, it shall be done in ways that prioritize Nigeria’s economic interest through promoting Nigerian businesses and protecting our people in Africa. Trade and Investment will remain core components of our African foreign policy. The approach will be collaborative.
We will rebuild Nigeria’s military power, re-organise its security architecture and enhance their technological prowess to improve security at home and Nigeria’s diplomatic influence in sub-regional, regional, and global affairs via peacekeeping activities.
We shall reposition Nigeria’s military-industrial complex for leadership in production and distribution of military hardware in Africa.
We will proactively reassert Nigeria’s leadership role in African affairs through constructive engagement using existing sub-regional and regional fora as well as bilateral platforms for dialogue on current and emerging challenges.
We will pay special attention to the ECOWAS region, with national security, collective economic development, and integration in mind.
Despite obvious challenges posed by migration, we will respect ECOWAS Freedom of Movement Protocols as it relates to movement of persons and goods. We will work with our neighbours to secure our borders and fight cross border crimes. But we will strengthen our immigration to account for movement into the country.
We will seek to restore credibility to Nigeria’s foreign policy through its adherence to and leadership on regional initiatives and programmes such as AfCFTA, NEPAD and The African Peer Review Mechanism. We would also do this through strengthening our relationship with our development partners and adherence and commitment to global peace and security
We will ensure a resilient, independent, robust, and more professional Foreign Service by setting up Nigerian Foreign Service Commission, thus decoupling the Foreign Service from the Federal Public Service, with a view to maintaining the international diplomatic nomenclature.