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2023 Presidency: Utomi’s ‘Big Tent’ sets agenda for Obi

As Labour Party prepares for the 2023 general election campaigns, one of the party’s support groups has set agenda and target for the presidential candidate of the party, Mr. Peter Obi. ANAYO EZUGWU reports

With the increasing expectations surrounding the candidacy of the presidential standard bearer of the Labour Party (LP), Mr. Peter Obi, some of the support groups and thinktanks behind the party have started setting agenda for him. One of such groups is the BIG TENT of the Third Force, which believes that a new Nigeria is possible with Obi’s presidency.

The convener of the group, Prof. Pat Utomi, a renowned Economist and former presidential candidate, said the third force movement has practical ways to achieve this incredibly audacious goal to pull Nigeria away from the precipice of the abyss in this time of mass discontent. Speaking during a recent media chat, Utomi expressed confidence that these practical ways would bring about a new and brighter Nigeria witnessed in the faces of Tobi Amusan and the Commonwealth Games medalists.

He said the group has a number of programmes that will raise the ground for a mass entrepreneurial, moral, and motivational initiative of social engineering that will usher in a prosperous, fair and just social order as a new Nigeria is really possible in a way that can make the founding fathers of this country find a new smile after this season of despair.

His words: “The scope of our announcements will include programmes for the youth and youthful to clean up and take back their country in this African climate month in which we mark international youth day. We also have lined up entrepreneurship training programmes offered free to young people across Nigeria from Jigawa to Jos and Jakande’s estates in Lagos, and capital support for the preparation in association with Sorosoke Third Force. “We shall also disclose tree planting initiatives in Sokoto and elsewhere by young people to halt the advance of the Sahara and earn credit from battling carbon footprints that could be channeled into job creation.

In addition, we will talk about the listening clinics we plan so the people can disclose where the shoe pinches and how they think relief for the pain they feel can come from. “To shepherd these initiatives, including building a national unemployment and employability dashboard and a network of youth centres to be the incubators of future national prosperity, these initiatives will come with reforms of local government administrations to make them economic development units rather than political units that are drainpipes.

“We have been putting in place policy teams to monitor the current state of policy and prescribe alternatives. The policy teams will liaise with the think tank and strategy group that recently held brainstorming sessions with Obi. To ensure that implementation is consistent with outcomes from the listening clinics, we are starting to run all over Nigeria and that Nigerians own and monitor the programmes and use them to hold those in public authority positions accountable, these groups will host workshops for all who aspire to public life.” The group said it will ensure that the incoming government of the Labour Party will listen to Nigerians to begin the necessary correction with the area the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) have failed the most, listening to the people, and acting in their best interest. “Vox populi Vox Dei.

The voice of the people is the voice of God, the saying goes. The leaders have a duty to listen to the people. APC and PDP have neglected this with the present wave of discontent as a predictable consequence. “A classic example of the failure of leadership comes through in the matter of a policy problem Kastina State dealt with under the governorship watch of late President Umaru Musa Yar’adua. As his Chief Economic Adviser who was on his team in Katsina State once pointed out when Yar’adua was governor, their biggest budget challenge was the deep hole of fertilizer subsidy. When they sort to find out the impact of the huge investment in the purchase of fertilizer they brought in consultants. “Asked to prioritize their needs the farmers ranked fertilizer about 13th out of 20, they indicated their biggest problem was desert encroachment and showed the biggest source of acceleration to the advancing desert was open grazing by cattle herders. In many communities, the top priority of the people at the bottom of the pyramid is usually not what politicians pay attention to. We believe that a government that cares must first listen to the people very deliberately.

A Korean folk tale well captured in a Harvard Business Review class; parables of leadership are our template for this necessary path. “This weekend, we met virtually with several hundred doctors that were part of a group of Drs4peterobi. They agreed to be the start-up group for our listening clinics. A now retired professor at the College of Medicine at the University of Lagos once described the health care system in Nigeria as a manmade disaster. Why is Nigeria’s health care system not working and medical tourism to India and Egypt is draining us of billions of dollars?

“On August 16 doctors and community leaders, patients, administrators of health care at home and abroad, nurses, and other health care workers will speak to us about where the problems lie, and the best way they think we can tackle them. We will follow by listening to primary school teachers, Almajiris, tech start-up entrepreneurs, pensioners, and manufacturers. With the benefit of honest feedback, we will turn to our approach for economic transformation.” Utomi noted that Labour Party will grow Nigeria’s economy from conspicuous consumption to production. He noted that Obi, who leads the forward charge of the collegial leadership of the third force has spoken frequently about moving Nigeria to production where we currently fare poorly and have thus moved Nigeria into the league of the world’s poor, far-off the SDG targets the United Nations set.

“Many have asked how the shift will take place. Beyond talk, we have a clear strategy to be implemented by honest passionately committed and disciplined patriots. The strategy we turn to is a revival of manufacturing based on the country’s factor endowments and the latent comparative advantage that will keep us competitive as we use limited industrial policy to be competitive on the select value chains we aim to dominate. Since every zone in Nigeria has endowments, we can have balanced development with each zone, aiming to be a globally dominant player in the value chain.

“This means planning that will incline education, infrastructure, and even external relations policies to be focused on that endowment and the consequent value chain and I am persuaded that mineral and agricultural values chains in the North-West can give us a new manufacturing base that can make Gusau, Funta and Kano big manufacturing hubs, just as Edo can host industrial parks processing plantain and cassava, among others for export and local needs. “In this plan industrial parks in which all the infrastructure deficits will be eliminated using markets to extract the so-called ‘prosperity paradox’ will be highly primed to compete from clusters in which the many setbacks for competitive manufacturing in Nigeria will be reduced to a minimum. Among the endowments around which we aim for the specific industrial policy will be sesame seeds, cocoa, rubber, oil palm, and limestone while growing the blue economy and tourism in the development of our long coastline.

“Re-programming institutions to work for growth rather than the bullypoliceman is critical to the new orientation and massive culture change training and injection of new blood into regulatory bodies to attain that will be a top priority to have a true marketdriven growth surge. An agricultural policy that stimulates the most efficient use of vast land areas that remain unexploited, especially in the savannah belt of our country will be brought under schemes of outgrower aggregation that should make us the new Ukraine. We do not have to experience inflation at the current level.

“As the mindset shifts to private sector led, low tolerance for corruption approach and attract new investment flows, especially with a twinning entrepreneur with diaspora partners, and derisking the investments through assets rather than cash facilities we expect a new peoples’ capitalism big bang. We also hope that just as we use business angels to support governance a league of technopreneurs will help us help SME ventures increase efficiency with tech support. This is a mass scaling up of an entrepreneurship initiative.

“We expect this scaling of venturing to benefit from programmes of skills development we will start this month and from using a green Army that will absorb the bulk of the unemployed into crops for tree planting and halting climate change,” he explained. On securing and uniting Nigeria, Utomi said the Big Tent is working on an approach to security that focuses on decentralization with federal coordination and standard setting which India has managed fairly well as well as a National Guard at local levels, besides policing, which is specific to the nature of insurgency at local levels. According to him, it is an approach to security that relies significantly on intelligence gathering, processing, and rapid response. Technology will also become a critical part of how we ensure that the first duty of the Leviathan is kept – security of lives and property.

He said: “Securing Nigeria is also about bringing the people together under one banner to ensure that Nigeria will rise up again. Already, those who try to divide with religion and ethnicity are being put to shame. As we speak, our man Dr. Tanko Yunusa, is travelling through the North-West. The tremendous reception for Peter Obi/Datti Ahmed is simply credible.

“In this month of the international youth day, we plan programmes that will mobilize the youth to clean the environment, cleanse polluted mindset and return the country to the majority, the youth of Nigeria. Through a cleanup Nigeria programme, the youth will signal that they are ready for the demographic dividend that will come from deploying the talents, energy, and passions of the youth for building a country of promise. “We shall also launch the virtual skill programme and employment dashboard this month. Human capital far outweighs physical assets in the capital stock of a country. So, education, our strategy for the new Nigeria, includes the pumping of both public and private sector capital to boost education in a way that will give us a high demographic dividend.”

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