2023 Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, has belatedly justified his decision not to construct a single new school during his two terms as governor of Anambra state.
His explanation came on the heels of sustained challenges by former presidential aide Reno Omokri who had repeatedly questioned Obi’s administration, challenging the former Anambra state governor and his followers to present a single school he instituted in his eight years as governor.
Reno promised a reward of $10,000 dollars to anyone who could show a school built by Obi.
In his reaction, Obi stated during a press conference on Wednesday, April 24, in Abuja that individuals who made such claims had not taken advantage of his manifesto.
He said that Anambra state was ranked 26th in the nation when he arrived, with shuttered schools and a broken educational system, saying that by the time he departed, Anambra had risen to the top.
He said: “I improved the quality, physical and mental well-being of the people, schools, had the basic things they needed and the people shone like stars and that was my manifesto.
“Building new schools when the old ones are moribund is just like building coastal lines when internal roads are impassable.”
Meanwhile in a recent post on his X account, Omokri knocked the former governor describing his decision as height of irresponsibility.
The post reads, The issue is that because Peter Obi failed to build any new schools in Anambra, throughout his eight-year tenure, despite a population explosion in Anambra, Anambra residents were flocking to other states, mainly Lagos, to enjoy free education under Tinubu and Fashola. Anambra has the fastest-growing natural population in Southern Nigeria. Only Lagos has a faster-growing population, but Lagos’s population growth is not natural. It is caused by migration.
“Please fact-check me: The 1991 census put Anambra’s population at 2,796,475. By the 2006 census, Anambra’s population had almost doubled to 4,177,828. It is the height of irresponsibility for a Governor of the Southern state with the highest population growth not to build even one nursery school, talk more of primary, secondary and university, in eight years.”
