By Bukola Kayode
Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State has taken a swipe at the presidential candidate of the Labour Party for the 2023 election for his description of Nigeria as a very poor country at the John Hopkins University, USA.
Sanwo-Olu said a personally signed statement entitled. “Factually Addressing Mr. Peter Obi’s Criticism of Nigeria at Johns Hopkins University” that Obi was being hypocritical as the former Anambra State Governor left his state poorer after two terms.
The Lagos Governor also described Obi’s statements at the Ivy League institution as unflattering and uncharitable.
Sanwo-Olu also said President Bola Ahmed Tinubu had done more to reduce poverty in Nigeria in two years, while Obi left Anambra poorer after eight years.
Sanwo-Olu said: “Any leader can fight poverty generationally by promoting education, improving healthcare, providing credit, and granting access to land.
“Now, I find it somewhat ironic that a man like Mr. Obi, who did not build a single school or a stand-alone hospital throughout his eight-year tenure as Governor of Anambra or sustainably provide credit facilities, would criticise the Government of Nigeria, which is actively doing that.
“I say this because the President of Nigeria, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is my predecessor, and as Governor of Lagos and now President of Nigeria, has built over 200 schools and provided student loans to more than 200,000 undergraduates of Nigerian tertiary institutions”.
He added: “In less than two years, he has provided over half a billion dollars in credit facilities to small and medium-scale enterprises.
“While he was Governor of Lagos State between 1999 and 2007, the President reduced poverty by more than 46%. There is every reason to believe that, based on what he did as Governor of Lagos, he will repeat the same feat at the federal level. After all, the best predictor of the future is the past”.
Sanwo compared Obi and Tinubu saying: “But let us examine the messenger, not just the message, and look at the issuer as well as the issues.
“Mr. Obi talks a good game. But was he able to reduce poverty while he governed Anambra? Perhaps we can let the facts speak for themselves.
“Under Peter Obi as a two term Anambra Governor, poverty in Anambra increased. It did not reduce. Before Peter Obi became Anambra Governor on Thursday, June 14, 2007, the poverty rate in Anambra was 41.4%”.
“But after only two years in office, the poverty rate in Anambra jumped to 53.7%.
“But the interesting thing is that five years after Peter Obi left office, his successor, Willie Obiano, reduced the poverty rate in Anambra from almost 60% to 14.8%”, Sanwo-Olu went further to say.
……Peter Obi’s Take On Nigeria’s Underdevelopment At John Hopkins University
On Friday April 25, Obi had shared on the social media platform, X, that he made a presentation on Nigeria’s development at the American university on the invitation of a professor at the school. According to Obi, Nigeria had better better developmental indicies than China and Vietnam up until the 90s, but currently both countries have overtaken Nigeria and lesser number people under the poverty line.
Obi wrote: “In my speech, I tried to assess 3 of our comparable nations – China, Vietnam and Indonesia, from 1990 till date. In 1990, the year the measurement of the Human Development Index (HDI) was started, these 3 comparable nations, including Nigeria, were all classified under the medium category of the HDI measurement. 35 years later, 3 of these nations have moved up to the High category of HDI while Nigeria has fallen into the low category.
” Within the same period of 35 years, from 1990 to 2025, the GDP Per Capita of these comparable nations have all improved. As of 1990, while Nigeria had a GDP per capita of $556, China had $317, Indonesia had $578, and Vietnam had only $99. Nigeria, obviously, had higher GDP per capita than China, while Vietnam had less than one-fifth of Nigeria’s per capita. Today, Nigeria’s per capita is about one-fifth of Indonesia’s ($5000) and Vietnam’s (4400) GDP per capita and below one-tenth of China’s (1300) GDP per capita. In the area of poverty, Nigeria with about 50 million poor people, had the least number of people in poverty in 1990 than any of the three countries.
“While China had about 750 million people living in poverty, Indonesia and Vietnam had 85 million and 60 million poor people, respectively. China alone had about 15 times the number of poor people than Nigeria. Today, however, Nigeria has more poor people than these 3 countries combined. The question then is, what exactly did these countries do to be able to achieve the desired growth and development? That is where political leadership comes in.
“These comparable nations, and indeed other progressive nations, unlike Nigeria, have competent leadership with character, capacity and compassion, committed to prioritizing investment in critical areas of developmental measures; Education, Health, and pulling people out of poverty”
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