The vice presidential candidate of Labour Party, LP, Datti Baba-Ahmed has reacted to the statement credited to the vice presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Ifeanyi Okowa.
Okowa had, in an interview with BBC pidgin, accused the former governor of Anambra state, Peter Obi, lacking enough experience to rule Nigeria.
He said Obi’s experience is small compared to the problems plaguing the country. He advised young people to be wise in choosing their leaders in the 2023 elections.
His words: “I didn’t say he won’t have votes, he will have them. But what I’m saying is that he’s not a new candidate. It hasn’t been long since he left the PDP.
“You know he was at APGA before; from APGA came to PDP. It hasn’t been long since he left PDP. So you can’t say anything about PDP because that’s where it was before.
“Some of us are still here. At every party there are good people and bad people. But today’s Nigeria has a lot of problems and we need the right person.
“That is why I call on our young people to be wise and vote well. They shouldn’t be blinded by the concept of a fake change because that’s how they got excited about Jonathan in 2015.
“His (Obi’s) previous experience is not enough for this one, it will be difficult. Their experience is not deep enough.
“Even as the current governor governing in a time of crisis, I know how difficult it is. I even want to learn from Atiku because he has experience with the federal government.
“The thing is not easy. For them to have managed the economy at that time and to have made it something better, offering hope, creating jobs and filtering society, it was not easy because it is something bigger.
“So someone is supposed to learn through that. If you look at Obi’s experience, you will know that it is small. His experience is not enough to handle the Nigerian problem.”
But reacting in an interview on ChannelsTV on Monday, Datti Baba-Ahmed asked Okowa to introduce someone who had more experience than his director, Peter Obi.
In his words: “It is false that Obi does not have enough experience. He has more experience than any of the contestants.
“Show me someone who has more experience than Peter Obi. None of them have as much as Peter Obi.”
Speaking about the structure, Baba-Ahmed argued that LP has a structure called “People Oriented Structure (Layered Structure)”.
He said that he and his director hope to have a “government in money and not money in government.”