Going into politics made me poorer – Peter Obi

  Former Anambra State Governor, Mr. Peter Obi, is inarguably  one of Nigeria’s most successful businessmen and politicians who have made a mark in many facets of life. But the irony of Obi’s life is that he keeps a low profile. But in a rare moment, Obi spoke to Saturday Vanguard on the state of the nation, Anambra politics, his legacies and why he feels the cap to be Anambra State governor will fit Oseloka Obaze

Here are the experts:
How do you see the agitation by the Indigenous People of Biafra for a separate state out of Nigeria?
(Cuts In) Look, irrespective of whatever the   Federal Government has said about IPOB, my position has remained constant-agitation in Nigeria is nationwide. It   is all over the country and not restricted to only one part of the country and the reason is very simple: there are millions of young people in their productive ages doing nothing.

When you don’t know where the next meal will come from, you are a free agent, you can become anything. The reason you people are here is because you know where the next meal will come from.
What you see today is the cumulative effect of leadership failure over the years in the country. That is one of the consequences and it’s not going to be solved by what we are doing today. You can quote me anywhere. We have to sit down, dialogue with those who are agitating, start looking at meaningful solutions that can give them hope. Once a country makes her people to develop a sense of hopelessness, the people will agitate a lot.
I gave you an instance of China. In 1980, the GDP of China was $341billion. The GDP of Nigeria your country was $143 billion. So, you can say that China was twice bigger than Nigeria. In terms of savings, Nigeria had in 1980 $10.5 billion and China had $10 billion.
In terms of   per capita, Nigeria was $870; China was $193. Today, China’s GDP is 12 trillion; thirty times bigger than ours. China’s savings that was $10 billion is now $3 trillion. Somebody you were four times before has moved miles ahead of you, that is our crisis today. That is why the agitation is on-going. It’s a simple thing. It’s the economy.
I can go on and on and show you more examples of what is causing agitations in Nigeria. South Korea just in savings alone had $3 billion when we had $10.5 billion. Today, they have $365 billion and we have $30 billion.
Thailand was $5 billion when we had $10 billion. So, why don’t we take the right steps and do the right things? The cost of our governance is unacceptable. When you talk about restructuring, they will say no, no, no, America has 50 States. You can’t compare us with America. That is a disaster. One State in America called California has a GDP of $2.6 trillion, six times Nigeria. Per capita is $50,000. We are not even investing in the future. The future is education.
Did this realization influence any aspect of your governance in Anambra or are you just telling us about political economy?
Look, it was seriously applied during my tenure and the results are clear. Somebody asked me recently why I saved in dollars. It was clear because of two things. We studied what China was able to do by attracting investors. China is investing and supporting manufacturing. That is driving 40% of their GDP. And these were done by regions within China. Every region was busy doing the right thing.
In Anambra, we invested about $20 million dollars in one company. I said to myself, why don’t we continue to save about $19 million to   $20 million per annum till 2030, which is when the SDGS will end. If you continue to put $20 million till 2030, plus the accumulation of interests, we would have about a billion dollars. Most regional manufacturing firms in China were actually set up by SMEs for about $2 million. So, if we decide to take 25% of   that and invest in manufacturing,   we will   have a thousand of them with half a billion dollars scattered all over the state. That alone can create a million jobs.
Secondly, we need to invest in education and the environment and we don’t have money for this. The World Bank approved an initial loan of $40 million for education, $40 million for environment, of which my government did not draw down from.   This education was to support science, technology, engineering and mathematics education, which is the future, because we know that as from 2025, there will be millions of job vacancies in that sector.
So, we said, since we are going to pay this money in the future, we started saving. Because we are going to earn a billion by the time the loan matures,   $500 million will go to these SMEs, $200 million will go to others, $300 million will be left. Everything being equal by 2050, we will be hitting almost $2 Billion. Meanwhile, we have 1,000 SMEs out there, which about 80% of them will survive,   and if they do, they shall be producing for export that will change the place.
But as lofty as your programmes were, there are claims by the present government that you left behind huge debts and liabilities now hampering the state.
Far from the truth. Let me tell you that as at the day I left office, I want you to quote me, I had no unpaid certificates of jobs that had been executed. Not one! I had no single unpaid certificate of supply that had been delivered. The highest supplies I had in government were the one from Innoson Motors . We bought vehicles of over N5 billion Naira from the company. The decision to buy from him was a deliberate policy to support him for the value the company was adding to the State in terms of employment and other multiplier effects in the economy of the State. I actually paid them all these monies, clearly a year before I left office.
The next ones are Coscharis Motors; we had billions of supplies from them. You can ask them, we paid him the funds. The other one was Zinox and HP. We bought the highest number of computers for schools –   over 30,000, which came to about N2.4 billion. Go and ask   Leo Stan Ekeh, I woke him up by 2.00 am in the morning; I said we wanted this order.