Youths, women will spearhead my administration if I’m elected president, says Obi

Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), says if elected president, youths will spearhead his administration.

Obi said this on Wednesday at a town hall meeting with youths in Port Harcourt, the Rivers capital.

The LP candidate promised to increase funding for education and grant loans to university students if he becomes president.

“A government that refused to recognise the impact of education on development is doomed. In my manifesto, I said we will fund education, we will increase the funding. We will invest in education because the greatest investment any society can do is education,” Obi said.

“The more educated a society is the more developed they are. You continue to talk about physical infrastructure when you have not built the human infrastructure, which is education.

“So we will fund education at the tertiary level through collaborations, government will bring the money and we can also get some corporations to support and we will do student loans.

“Universities should be able to manage their resources, so they don’t have to shut down. So many things are not adding up but I will sit down with ASUU and we will discuss.

“I will not allow them to make you stay eight years for a five years course. Five years will be five years. If I have a problem with ASUU, it is between me and them. You shouldn’t suffer for our disagreement.

“I assure you that when I become president I will visit at least 10 universities in a year. I visited over 500 secondary schools when I was a governor in Anambra. And all their school prefects have my phone number and I deal with them directly.

“I am elected to make universities work, so I am going to visit the universities and make them work.

“This government is going to be a youth and women government. The old people will be there as advisers, they will guide us, we will respect them but the youth will spearhead it.”