Former Anambra State Governor, Peter Obi’s jumped to National Limelight over the weekend after delivering a resounding speech at ‘The Platform’ , an event organized by popular Pastor Poju Oyemade of the Covenant Christian Centre.
The speech resonated with a lot of Nigerians as he highlighted in ways not seen before, the waste in Governance perpetuated by State Government’s across the country.
As expected, not everyone will be happy with the speech. Whilst, some may not totally agree with some of points, no one has actually come out to dispute any…except well, Mr. Olawale Olaleye, Thisday Political Editor, who had his own views.
Here are some examples;
Calling Peter Obi “Liar”
But the problem with Obi’s prognosis is that in trying to look good or appear to stand aloof from the maddening crowd, he told a few ‘lies’, thus exaggerating some of those things he called practical examples. Ironically, the ‘lies’ resonated with the audience and it seemed like the ‘truth’ the audience wanted to hear.
On providing food
Talk about the cost of feeding in Government Houses or at the presidential villa, to which many people had allocated different costs, depending on how much they envisaged might have been budgeted for it, one thing that is missing here is that your state house is the symbolism of your sovereignty. For crying out loud, the president is not the one eating all the food and drinking the drinks budgeted for. In other words, you are assessed the way you present yourself and it is the same image you’d boast the day you have a visiting president or renowned personality from other climes.
This is why even at the family level, no matter how bad or good a house looks, the tendency that you will be prevented from entering the kitchen is high. The living area is where people are quick to showcase. This is because if you sight the state of the kitchen in some homes, you may never take a cup of water there anymore. But the case is not the same with the living area!
On Convoys
The convoy matter is another interesting debate. It is true that the fleet of some governors can be an eyesore, if not sheer oppression. But check out the convoy of some sane governors and you would make sense of the combination. For example, a majority of them have ambulances in their convoy as well as back-up vehicles in the case of an eventuality. They don’t have to be used by the governors but they could come in handy. There have been instances, where some governors ran into accident scenes or armed robbery and had to administer first aid on some of the victims rescued as well as convey them to the hospital or move them to safer places.
Had that governor not included an ambulance or a back-up car in his convoy, his timely arrival at the scene would have been of no consequence. There was the story of a governor, who ran into a stranded citizen on the express and at a bad time. He not only offered the citizen the back-up vehicle, he also asked that his security ensures his mechanic gets to the place before leaving. That’s providing leadership, however, insignificant it might seem and it is one of the most effective ways of identifying a responsible leader.
We are sure by now, some of our readers who resonated with Peter Obi’s speech will be getting exasperated. Some of us did at Nairametrics. However, you can click the link below to read the rest of the article.
Source: Peter Obi’s Basket Ideology
I have listing to His excellency Peter Obi of same discussion on CNBC of the same topic. I believed it may sense to every reasonable leader and they need to learned from his experience rather than theory that make little sense . There is no point moving with a lot of fleet cars because of the unexpected. Our first replubic leader do same as Obi which make them a better leader. Cut your recurrent expenditure and invest more into capital expenditure that will move us from recession .
Kurfi
whoever tries to dispute Mr Peter Obi is making him self a fool. nothing can be used to justify the extravagant spending of our leaders. thats just the simple truth.