Purposeful leadership for:
Securing and Uniting Nigeria
Production-centred growth for food security and export (Moving Nigeria from consumption to production)
Effective legal and institutional reforms to fight corruption and enthrone rule of law
Leapfrogging Nigeria from oil to the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR)
Expanding physical infrastructure through public-private partnership (PPP) reforms (unleashing growth-enabling entrepreneurship and market-creating innovations)
Human capital development that empowers competitiveness
Robust foreign policy that restores Nigeria’s strategic relevance
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.”
As your President, my team and I will 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 minimum.
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 with Dr Yusuf Datti-Ahmed, and this is our commitment and promise to Nigerians.
So, help us God.
Our governance principles, priority projects and programmes shall be anchored on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
As we come to power in May 2023, we are aware of the daunting array of domestic and external challenges confronting our dear nation, Nigeria and we are fully prepared to lead from the front. 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 ours. The war in Ukraine has injected a high degree of uncertainty about its immediate and long-term implications.
Meanwhile, the economic disruptions wreaked by COVID-19 on international commerce, global supply chains, as well as international commitments such as those relating to climate change and sustainable development goals (SDGs), have added a layer of complexity and challenges which Nigeria must now 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 our 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.
As your President and Vice President elected by all Nigerians, the buck will stop at our desk. We will be fully responsible for governance and national security decisions and actions undertaken by our administration.
Against this backdrop, our administration has identified seven (7) priorities for governance, even as good governance efforts will not be limited to these priorities only.
In Securing Nigeria, We shall:
Pursue deliberate and proactive policies that will engender a sense of security and 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.”
We will from day one engage, support and partner with component parts of the federation and national institutions to take ownership of the national security architecture and the three-level policing that we shall implement. We will also adjust 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 on 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.
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 both the Ministry of Interior, Police Affairs and other regulatory/supervisory agencies to provide robust, effective and required supervisory expectations and demands.
In pursuit of Section 33 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (1999 as Amended), we shall ensure that every Nigerian life matters. Under my watch, nobody will kill a Nigerian or shed an innocent Nigerian’s blood and go scot-free. We shall deploy every available resource and competence of the Federal Government to pursue perpetrators and bring them to justice.
Decisively deal with the incessant and notorious banditry, insurgency, kidnapping and cross-border terrorism in our country today. We will take four immediate steps: activate all the necessary regional cooperative arrangement on securing our borders with neighbouring countries in West and Central Africa including Niger, Chad, Cameroun; embark on boosting the personnel of our armed forces and optimally equipping, training, and funding them to respond adequately to the security threats; deploying state-of-the-arts military technology; and proactively attract necessary international military support and assistance.
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 matters of nation-building, integration and cohesion.
Ensure transparency and strict adherence to dictates of our constitution in all matters of governance and allocation of resources and projects.
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 worked and overtime wages where applicable. We will drive the legislation to retain a National Minimum Wage with a binding effect and application across all the States and Local Governments of Nigeria. This shall include the criminalisation of non-payment of salaries, wages, pensions, entitlements, benefits, and violation of collective bargaining agreements.
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 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 sector.
Move Nigeria 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 will, with all sense of urgency, aggressively pursue policies and programmes to enhance the productivity and competitiveness of all the 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 will, with the required sense of urgency, optimize all the comparative advantages of our 36 states and the FCT, 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 with emphasis on the vast arable lands of our Northern Region.
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 apprenticeship 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 will apply purposeful leadership to dismantle the impediments to free trade and ease of doing business.
We 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 will pursue aggressive technology-driven public sector financial management system anchored on well-trained and motivated civil service.
We will 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 of 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 6% percent to our GDP, well below the African average of 17 percent. Our national situation is made worse given that 116% 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.)
We shall aggressively prioritize the mechanization of the huge endowment of arable land across our nation particularly in our Northern region to make agriculture the new oil of the new Nigeria our government shall birth.
It has been established that Nigeria is among the top 10 most vulnerable countries to climate change which poses the greatest economic, physical, financial, and developmental risks. But it also offers enormous opportunity to unleash the green growth transition and boost prosperity. We shall establish a Green Army tasked with identifying all opportunities to tap into the 3 trillion dollars international climate finance to engineer economic growth and employment for our millions of youths and transition our country to the green epoch.
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 to improving their synergy and functional effectiveness. Key recommendations of all previous reports on police and security sector reforms will be implemented. For instance, the three-level policing will be promptly pursued with detailed guidelines to check abuse.
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 judiciary, government and regulatory agencies to curb corruption and improve governance outcomes and service delivery.
We will pursue all required reforms for speedy adjudication of cases including digitization of all court processes. Every case in our courts must be concluded within 12 months. We will send an executive bill to the national assembly to this effect. This will include amendments to allow Nigerians in diaspora to vote and for all election-related cases to be concluded before swearing-in. This means fixing and cleaning up our broken politics to empower Nigerians to demand political accountability. This will necessitate a fundamental reform of our electoral process.
Subsidiarity shall be our mantra: We will devolve decision-making to the basic levels of responsibility. This means giving back governance to the grassroots by restoring the autonomy of local government councils.
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, Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence, robotics, virtual reality, blockchain technology and data science, all of 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 (both national and subnational grid electricity) and multimodal transport infrastructure.
We will 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.
We will incentivise the refining segment 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 will 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 give 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 have been a major reason for the high unemployment, especially among the youth.
We will ensure that the Federal Government offers meaningful incentives to corporate entities and industries that make discernible efforts to transit to clean and alternative energy, not only for consumption but also for exports. Our priority is the preservation of our environmental integrity, using a carrot-and-stick approach to ensure that industrial production and oil production do not damage our environment and livelihood systems.
We will review and enforce the mandatory National Strategic Reserve of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), aviation fuel, and cooking gas to reduce our national vulnerability to sudden disruptions to the supply of these fuels.
We will strengthen the incentive regimes for new growth industries, in particular culture and creative industry, and technology-oriented industries.
We will prioritize the development of MSMEs through a boutique of incentives which include new structures, new capital access, new legislation to support small business growth and strategic centres of excellence for small businesses such as Enterprise Hubs, Business Incubators and MSME Industrial clusters.
We will drive the expansion of Nigerian content initiative with emphasis on the promotion of made-in-Nigeria goods and services as a pillar of our administration. This will be accomplished by expanding the success of Nigeria Content legislation implemented in Nigeria’s Oil and Gas sector, to other sectors of the economy.
Entrepreneurship and market-creating innovations
We will address current bottlenecks in extant national policies and frameworks with the view to unlock resources for investment in critical physical and social infrastructure.
We will seek to harmonise agencies involved in the infrastructure space to address coordination failures that impede effectiveness and efficiency.
We will 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.
We will integrate 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.
We will 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. We will liberalize the transmission component of the electricity chain to complement the already privatized generation and distribution sub-sectors to significantly increase the generation and distribution of electricity to Nigerians. We will promote a healthy energy mix that prioritizes renewable and clean energy in line with global trends.
We will 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 ratio to be agreed with government participation limited to those areas where there is a clear market failure.
We will vigorously support the private sector to construct fibreoptic backbone connecting all tertiary institutions and state capitals, to enable free broadband access for accelerated digital transformation of the economy.
We will deploy Nigeria’s enormous natural gas reserves to drive industrial revolution and provide 24-Hour electricity for the entire nation.
We will create financing incentives to unlock private capital provision of affordable social housing for Nigerian workers and people in proximity to their businesses and workplaces.
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.
We will pursue a Marshal plan-type programme on education that incorporates compulsory technical and vocational skills, sports, entrepreneurship, programming, and digital skills from primary to the secondary level. All our Federal Universities of Technology in Akure, Owerri, Bauchi, Minna and Yola will be properly funded, strengthened, and remodelled like top technology institutes in the world such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to serve as hubs/centres of Research, Development and Commercialization of ideas for the quick industrialization of our dear nation, Nigeria. We will also consider the establishment of new ones in some of our major industrial capitals such as Kano, Lagos, and Rivers states.
Achieving the revolution we envisage for the educational sector would require bold initiatives including:
We will 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.
We will undertake an upward review of national budgetary allocation to education to at least 16%, aligning it with global best practices threshold of 15 to 20%, and well beyond the present 5.6 to 8.6% allocation.
We will address the gaps in the legislation guiding the funding access modalities to Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), and the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), to remove 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 will provide health insurance cover to 100 million poorest Nigerians including pregnant women, the aged and the disabled. This shall be without discrimination by socio-economic status in line with constitutional provisions as captured in Chapter 2 Section 17 (3)(d) of our constitution. The NHIS shall be strengthened in an efficient manner to stimulate private sector-driven health provision driven by accessibility and affordability to cover informal sector workers, the weak and the vulnerable.
We will 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.
We will 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. This will be consolidated with a bill to the National Assembly to prohibit public officers from using public resources to access healthcare in foreign countries.
Our government will 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 an equitable distribution of appointments to men, women, and the youths with slightly higher allocation to women and youths.
We will incentivize private sector investment in sports and work towards transforming the sports sector into a profitable business to uplift our youths and address youth unemployment. The sports ministry shall be strengthened to attract investments through blended financial mechanisms towards developing sporting talents, revamping sporting facilities, and recreation centres across the nation.
We will 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 address the high prevalence of our national youth population that are categorized as NEET (not in education, employment or training).
We will, as a matter of urgency, transmit a bill to the National Assembly for an act to prohibit public officials including civil servants from sending their children to foreign schools while occupying or serving in public office.
We will vigorously support the creative industries (fashion, music, arts, entertainment) to become significant areas of our comparative advantage and also sources of job creation for our youths and tourism.
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 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 shall creatively deploy Nigeria’s soft power in Africa and around the world through Nigeria’s leading role in entertainment – music and Nollywood – to enhance our national interest.
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 African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCTA), New Economic Partnership for African Development (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 prioritize the drive to expand Nigeria’s exports by building strong bilateral relationships with end-user global markets. This will include creating structures such as nationally organised strategic trade and investment missions which are industry targeted; in-country trade missions that complement our current Foreign missions, with sole responsibilities to build up acceptable markets for made-in-Nigeria goods and services.
We shall embrace political entrepreneurialism to directly lead missions to top Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and leading Global Value Chain headquarters, lobbying and granting them all the necessary incentives to expand their production and manufacturing value chains to our country to link us to the important income-growing and employment-generating global value chains.