Presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr. Peter Obi has said why he believes that the holidays of the country’s presidents and political office holders must be spent in the country.
The former Governor of Anambra State, who just concluded a two-day visit to Sokoto State with his running mate, Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, said that the country’s leaders must holiday in the country so that they can see first-hand the difficulties faced by compatriots, especially internally displaced people (IDPs).
Mr. Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 election, in an X post, said his visit to the Ramin Kura IDP Camp in Sokoto North LGA, within the Sokoto metropolis, which is currently housing over 1,000 IDPs was revealing.
According to him, during his tour of the facility, he “found it particularly distressing to see Nigerians crammed into makeshift shelters and thatched rooms, with some rooms housing as many as 10 persons. The camp also lacks adequate toilet facilities, a primary healthcare centre, and even a basic school for the children.”
Insisting that as long as even one Nigerian lives in an IDP camp, “we are all internally displaced,” he stressed that the government of the day “must work assiduously to make the temporary accommodation for our dear citizens living in these camps comfortable, while ensuring that all the underlying security issues that created these conditions in the first place are resolved, to enable them to return to their ancestral homes.”
Noting that it was his 12th visit to IDP camps across the country, Obi said that “just like in the others, I am committing to continuously supporting these Nigerians for as long as it takes,” while again calling “on the government and the relevant agencies to immediately look into the plight of these citizens and address their pressing needs.”
On arrival in Sokoto, Mr. Obi and his team had paid a courtesy visit to His Eminence, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III, the Sultan of Sokoto before attending a town hall meeting, where they addressed questions relating to “unity, security, education, subsidy, healthcare, corruption, poverty, agriculture, power, infrastructure, ethnicity, and the future of our country.”
Their message, he said, was clear: “there will be no fake promises. We must unite the country and confront insecurity decisively, while also addressing human insecurity. We must fight poverty, unemployment, hunger, and hopelessness if we are to reduce criminality and create a safer society.
“We discussed money politics and its devastating consequences. When poverty becomes the instrument through which politicians buy votes, citizens are trapped in a cycle where the same system that impoverishes them is repeatedly rewarded. We must break this cycle of bad leadership driven by transactional politics,” he stressed.
“The work ahead is enormous. But with courage, competence, compassion, character, and the collective determination of Nigerians, we can begin to change the story,” he pointed out, noting that their consultations with various other groups in the state also extensively addressed “insecurity, out-of-school children, endemic poverty, youth unemployment, drug prevalence, and other issues affecting our people in this part of the country.”
