Leader of the Labor Party (LP), Professor Pat Utomi, has said that politicians in some political parties paid millions of naira to Labor Party officials to destroy the party.
Utomi stated this in Abuja while opening the Secretariat of the Big Tent Independent Campaign Council, a coalition of support organizations aiming to achieve the presidential ambition of the LP candidate, Peter Obi.
The professor of political economy who is also the chairman of the coalition blamed the politicians for the nation’s woes, as the country failed to build a real political party.
He said Nigerian youths who are fed up with the ugly state of the country have found the former governor of Anambra, adding that the LP will focus on improving the lives of ordinary Nigerians instead of serving the selfish interests of a few powerful elites.
“The focus of power over the destination has led to a transaction of nature that has no importance. As we speak today, some of these political parties have paid millions and millions to workers’ party officials to decamp but still forget that what we need is a new Nigeria whose children- our children can live happily without any insecurity,” he said.
While blaming the All Progressives Congress (APC) for not having an ideology, Utomi said the party is only aiming to capture power in 2015.
He assured that if elected, the party’s presidential candidate would move Nigeria from a country of consumption to a country of production.
He said: Our country needs to be renewed. It is easy to blame anyone for Nigeria’s problems, but it is time to move forward, look ahead and forget yesterday. The fact that Naked is expensive, very expensive. The country inherited by our ancestors is a country of great commitment. I like to remind people of 1960.
“Obi talked about consumption to production. But we started in 1960 with production. I like to remind people all the time that our founding father looked at the endowments and realized that the main reason Nigeria was colonized was the extraction of raw materials to go to Europe, but The colonialists did not bother or try at all to industrialize Nigeria.
“Indeed, at the time of independence, technically there were two factories in Nigeria. However, the pace with the young men and women who started taking charge in 1956/57 and the speed with which we moved to production is unbelievable. I believe we can still achieve some transitional form.
“The center of the development challenge we have is our failure to build a real political party. I believe this is the beginning of the formation of the APC. When the APC was established, they focused on gaining power for the purpose of preventing a real political party and we have seen the damage done in Nigeria.