I’m not desperate to be president… I just want Nigeria to work, says Obi

Peter Obi, a former governor of Anambra, says he is not desperate to become president of Nigeria. 

Obi spoke at the fourth convocation ceremony of Nexford University, the US-based online school.

The presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 election decried the state of leadership in the country, describing it as “an imposition on the people”.

Obi urged the graduating students to embrace the spirit of servitude so as to lead effectively and “ignite the needed change”.

He added that he is “desperate to see the country work”.

“All of these that we are saying is for you to use it and ignite that change and support. It is not for you to start saying ‘I want to be in charge. I want to do this. I want to do that’,” he said.

“When people say I am desperate I say ‘No’. I am not desperate to be Nigeria’s president’. I am desperate to see Nigeria work because it can work.”

He said Nigerian youths must help to reignite the “right leadership that the country requires for development”.

“James Robinson, one of the Nobel laureates in economics, last year said it openly that Nigeria is a country that knows what to do to prosper and refuses to do it,” Obi added.

“How can you allow drivers and people who are at their destinations to drive you? You will lose. They have passed their destinations. They have passed their time.

“That is what you should help to reignite. Use what you have henceforth to help us change the society. Do not go and be part of this. You are a victim of Nigeria. Because our age and the one before refused to do what is right and we are suffering for it.”

Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) picked Obi as his running mate in the 2019 presidential election.

Four years later, Obi contested for the presidential office under the LP but polled third behind Abubakar and Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC).