I think the OP needs to add that Peter Obi's zero debt policy is not necessarily that the state would not borrow at all , but that every project implemented with borrowed money must repay the debt directly. He frowned at what he called "social debt", eg, borrow to fix roads. He may be persuaded to borrow to build a refinery (my views), or to invest in top private companies.

I don't see Obi borrowing to build a flyover or a bridge because he is already building those things without borrowing.

Onlytruth:

@Obiagu1

Your points are clear enough to me. Don't expect Nigerians to understand it though.
They are used to megalomania.
As long as their governor throws around scam words like "world class", "largest in Africa", "first in the world", they would fall for any borrowing. That is what folks like ekt_bear forgets about Nigeria.

Peter Obi said that every project that is implemented with borrowed money must pay for itself. Simple and short.
He didn' t say the project should pay indirectly (spin off effect), NO. He said DIRECTLY.

If the state borrows for a power plant for instance, that plant must pay it back; nothing more or less.
It is a very sensible and prudent policy; but some Nigerians are not used to it.

Exactly, if you can't pay for yourself, then you wait else plans will be made on how to make up the short fall like raising taxes or other means. This is why I keep talking about updating our tax laws.

Some people are talking about spin off effect which can't be guaranteed; very misguided and silly!

Yeah I agree. If the project cant pay directly for itself, then dont do it(unless its absolutely necessary). Government should be run as a business and must be very accountable and fiscally responsible.

Onlytruth:

@Obiagu1

Your points are clear enough to me. Don't expect Nigerians to understand it though.
They are used to megalomania.
As long as their governor throws around scam words like "world class", "largest in Africa", "first in the world", they would fall for any borrowing. That is what folks like ekt_bear forgets about Nigeria.

Peter Obi said that every project that is implemented with borrowed money must pay for itself. Simple and short.
He didn' t say the project should pay indirectly (spin off effect), NO. He said DIRECTLY.

If the state borrows for a power plant for instance, that plant must pay it back; nothing more or less.
It is a very sensible and prudent policy; but some Nigerians are not used to it.

Onlytruth, which project has not or will not be able to pay for itself?? A "world class", "largest in africa" or "first in the world" project will almost always be able to pay for itself in the long run.

It like if I want to start up a business and I have a property. You are basically telling me to sell my property instead of using the property as a collateral for loans. If I do the latter, I'll still have both the property and the loan. To me, this is common sense.

^^
The problem is that most of those "world class" things never get built in Nigeria.
Just show me one anywhere in Nigeria.

I trust Igbos to defend their own even when they are mediocre and sometimes outright incompetent.
This is one of the major reasons for the poor quality of leadership we have in the SE.

So borrowing money to improve your infrastructure which will spur further development is now a faulty model.
All in the name of making your peter obi and his apga look good.

At a time when the SE is falling behind other regions in almost all economic indices.
Just sit there while Peter Obi sends you lot to the stone Age.

The worst is that those of u saying this dont live in the SE.
Workers are on strike, schools are closed, doctors are on strike, no dicernable infrastuctural projects.
So it then begs the question , even before he starts borrowing, where is all the state funds?
This is a classic case of woeful management.

Shameless things.

RoadStar:

I trust Igbos to defend their own even when they are mediocre and sometimes outright incompetent.
This is one of the major reasons for the poor quality of leadership we have in the SE.

So borrowing money to improve your infrastructure which will spur further development is now a faulty model.
All in the name of making your peter obi and his apga look good.

At a time when the SE is falling behind other regions in almost all economic indices.
Just sit there while Peter Obi sends you lot to the stone Age.

The worst is that those of u saying this dont live in the SE.
Workers are on strike, schools are closed, doctors are on strike, no dicernable infrastuctural projects.
So it then begs the question , even before he starts borrowing, where is all the state funds?
This is a classic case of woeful management.

Shameless things.

has borrowing been able to cure the flood menace? What of the doctors that just called off 11-months-old strike in ogun? Can u compare any sw city to enugu, awka and owerri? Why the high cost of education in ur area? Can't borrowing cater for them?

The Part whose Governor Appointed the
[size=30pt]SPECIAL ADVISER ON COMEDY?
IBOTIC COMEDY[/size]

seanet02:

The Part whose Governor Appointed the
SPECIAL ADVISER ON COMEDY?
IBOTIC COMEDY

and how is it any of you business?? What has ethnicity got to do with this? Yorooba comedy!

Very Ibotic reasoning. Motto ko Motor ni

seanet02:

The Part whose Governor Appointed the
[size=30pt]SPECIAL ADVISER ON COMEDY?
IBOTIC COMEDY[/size]

guy, how far? Is aregbesola still serving as a commissioner in lagos?

kasiem:

guy, how far? Is aregbesola still serving as a commissioner in lagos?

the World Bank just Endorsed his policies and legacies on Youth Employment, may be you can fix your jobless mind there since your Governor is only interested in Laugh Matters

kasiem:

has borrowing been able to cure the flood menace? What of the doctors that just called off 11-months-old strike in ogun? Can u compare any sw city to enugu, awka and owerri? Why the high cost of education in your area? Can't borrowing cater for them?

Peter Obi is plain incompetent.
What has he done with the state funds.
Almost all aspects of the civil service are in one form of pending/ suspended or ongoing strike.
Stop excusing incompetence my friend.

RoadStar:

Peter Obi is plain incompetent.
What has he done with the state funds.
Almost all aspects of the civil service are in one form of pending/ suspended or ongoing strike.
Stop excusing incompetence my friend.

and i can tell u that ur state and region can never near anambra and SE in development and good governance. I dont want to haggle with u, rather, an invitation to anambra will solve the imbroglio. The only place obi has failed is in onitsha and nnewi. If the greedy civil servants are not satisfied with our meagre resources, they can go to hell.

kasiem:

and i can tell u that your state and region can never near anambra and SE in development and good governance. I dont want to haggle with u, rather, an invitation to anambra will solve the imbroglio. The only place obi has failed is in onitsha and nnewi. I[s]f the greedy civil servants are not satisfied with our meagre resources[/s], they can go to hell.

So you Can live n Just N18,000 per month, typical Ibo man
Wicked Soul

Posted by: RoadStar

I trust Igbos to defend their own even when they are mediocre and sometimes outright incompetent.
This is one of the major reasons for the poor quality of leadership we have in the SE.

So borrowing money to improve your infrastructure which will spur further development is now a faulty model.
All in the name of making your peter obi and his apga look good.

At a time when the SE is falling behind other regions in almost all economic indices.
Just sit there while Peter Obi sends you lot to the stone Age.

The worst is that those of u saying this dont live in the SE.
Workers are on strike, schools are closed, doctors are on strike, no dicernable infrastuctural projects.
So it then begs the question , even before he starts borrowing, where is all the state funds?
This is a classic case of woeful management.

Guy you sound goofy, frankly.
What in the world are you talking about?

I challenged you debt hogs before to show me which highly indebted state in Nigeria has "a world class" anything.
You didn't.
I'll challenge you again to show me all the highly indebted states in Nigeria, and point out which of them is more developed than Anambra state. Please do that fast.
You also cited strikes as your measure; pray how many times has the NLC duked it out what the ALMIGHTY federal government of Nigeria over that same salary issues? Do you know how much Nigeria controls as a country? Why should there EVER be a strike in Nigeria over salaries? When you answer these questions, you would eat it your own vomit.

It is fools like you that push states to economic bondage for generations to come and still drive them to stone age.

Onlytruth:

Posted by: RoadStar
Guy you sound goofy, frankly.
What in the world are you talking about?

I challenged you debt hogs before to show me which highly indebted state in Nigeria has "a world class" anything.
You didn't.
I'll challenge you again to show me all the highly indebted states in Nigeria, and point out which of them is more developed than Anambra state. Please do that fast.
You also cited strikes as your measure; pray how many times has the NLC duked it out what the ALMIGHTY federal government of Nigeria over that same salary issues? Do you know how much Nigeria controls as a country? Why should there EVER be a strike in Nigeria over salaries? When you answer these questions, you would eat it your own vomit.

It is fools like you that push states to economic bondage for generations to come and still drive them to stone age.

The way gullible fools like u throw big words around when ur problems are simple, highly indebted state ko world class ni.
Who cares.
Pay teachers, doctors and lawyers salaries, build roads etc
Anambra has the highest number of industrial actions in Nigeria.
The governor is plain incompetent simple.

kasiem:

and i can tell u that your state and region can never near anambra and SE in development and good governance. I dont want to haggle with u, rather, an invitation to anambra will solve the imbroglio. The only place obi has failed is in onitsha and nnewi. If the greedy civil servants are not satisfied with our meagre resources, they can go to hell.

The embolded shows that you are both selfish and have not been anywhere near Anambra of late.
Why are you lying ?

"Mr. Obi’s undoing – apart from the aforementioned paucity of imagination – lies in his increasing confidence that propaganda is a substitute for solid governance and verifiable achievements.
With little to show for his years so far in office, the governor has taken to trumpeting and advertising hollow accomplishments. His signature “accomplishment” is the tarring of 500 kilometers of roads. Missing in that claim – assuming the accuracy of the figure – is the poor quality of the roads. Last June, I traveled on Ifite road in Awka, one of the most recently tarred roads, and an important traffic artery that leads to the state-owned university. Despite the recentness of its construction, the road was already filled with potholes.
In fact the state capital, Awka, is so rundown and wretched that it would do war-ravaged Mogadishu no credit at all. What’s clear is that the governor believes his image to constitute aesthetic asset. Wherever you turn in the state capital, you’re bound to see some billboard, always with an image of Mr. Obi’s face. Some billboards  , "

Read on at http://www.usafricaonline.com/2011/08/16/anambra-gov-peter-obi-advertising-hollow-accomplishments-by-okey-ndibe/
The author of this except, (Dr Okey Ndibe) apart from his well known reputation, hails from Amawbia in Awka.

Stop utilising lies to suffice your argument.

Here is a rebuttal to the Okey Ndibe diatribe.


Anambra: May God help Okey Ndibe!
By Valentine Obienyem
Tuesday, October 04, 2011


Photo: Sun News Publishing
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On the 27th of August, 2011, Anambra State turned 20. Ordinarily, other leaders would have celebrated such an accomplishment through boisterous merriment. Not given to such indulgence, Governor Peter Obi celebrated it differently by assembling the people of Anambra as has not been witnessed in the past.

Those who attended, included Igwe Alfred Achebe, the Obi of Onitsha who led over 100 Traditional Rulers; Francis Cardinal Arinze; the first Papal Nuncio from Nigeria, Archbishop Jude Okoro; Bishop Owen Nwokolo of the Anglican Diocese on the Niger; Mustapha Chike Obi; Prof. Dora Akunyili; Dr. Oby Ezekwesil; Chief Emeka Anyaoku; Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala(She also delivered a paper); Prof. Charles Soludo; Innocent Egbunike; Mary Onyali-Omagbemi; Stella Oduah, the Minister of Aviation; Prof Barth Nnaji (delivered a paper); almost all Anambra people at the National Assembly, among many others. In fact, it had the setting of the ancient Greek Agora, where men congregated to take decisions on weighty State matters.

As the Governor himself said, the event was not to celebrate vanity, but to celebrate five years of peace in Anambra State and subtly call the attention of our people to their State and invite them to take possession of her. Since the State was created, she has been in the hands of thugs who visited her with rape and rapine thus injuring her in body and spirit. As could be observed, everybody in the State liked what the Governor did. As a result of their harkening to the Governor’s clarion call, a lot of things are happening in the State. I can even use an example to buttress that. As recently reported in the papers, the Managing Director of Genesis Food, Ichie Nneto Orazulike, a big name in the food and catering industry visited the Governor with three white men. Orazulike said that the speech of the Governor appealing to the people of the State to come and assist in her development touched him, and because of that, he had decided to invest heavily in the State with his expatriate counterparts.

Orazulike has a lot of successful businesses in States other than Anambra. During discussion with the Governor, as further reported in the newspapers, he said it was particularly painful to him that he had not been able to establish something really big in the State. He said that people like him were not to blame, but the past political leaders in the State who were totally antithetical to development. He went on to give an example. In his words: “my Governor, it was under a particular leader that the entire patrimony of the State worth over 30 billion Naira was burnt down by the very agents of the State and reactionary forces. If they could do this to the property of the State, what would they not do to the investment of people in the State?” As Orazulike spoke, one could see the pain he was undergoing at what Anambra State used to be. His position mirrors that of many Anambrarians. He capped it up by saying that investing in Anambra before the advent of Governor Obi was like asking somebody to invest in Afghanistan.

Today, under Governor Obi, the entire scenario has changed. We now have quality investment springing up in the State following his tireless efforts. It is glorious that we now have in Anambra State a pharmaceutical company such as Juhel Parenental Drugs manufacturing, Innoson Motor manufacturing, Orange Drugs, amongst others. The most celebrated is the on-going construction of what will become the biggest brewery in Nigeria, the SABMiller facility in Onitsha. In the first phase of the SABmiller foray in the State, it is investing over 120 million Dollars and it is expected that it will expand quickly.

I do not in this article intend to regurgitate what the Governor himself has done in Anambra State that has made him the darling of everybody: donor and international agencies, the Presidency that appointed him into the Economic Management Team and named him an Honorary Adviser on Finance. Apart from the peace that has returned to the State, we experience the hands of a man who really understands what development is. Under him, Anambra has become a state of many firsts. We now have the first teaching hospital nearing completion[b] (Okey Ndibe and his mentor, Ngige, are not happy over the development for the simple reason that it is Obi who is doing it and they made it clear, Okey in his column; Ngige in an Interview that appeared in the Daily Independent of 23rd of September);[/b] the first library, the first Secretariat; the first time roads are constructed in places without roads since Anambra was created; the first time buses, internet, computers, laboratory materials were given to schools, among many other firsts. Some of these things may be called insignificant by critics, but they were not there before.

Even the deaf and dumb can agree that Anambra is a lot better than it ever was. Thus, during the 20th year anniversary, Emeka Anyaoku, the man without cant said that he could now see a more focused development in the State. Every speaker, including Oby Ezekwesili and Chike Obi said the same thing. Interestingly, Dr. Ngozi-Okonjo-Iweala said what was very significant. According to her, Obi is Nigeria’s most fiscally responsible Governor. She went on to urge him to continue doing what he is doing for his State in spite of many wicked and sometimes ignorant and uninformed critics who are always at work.

As she predicted, these critics are at it again! First they did not consider it worth the while calling Anambra people together to discuss the progress of the State. The Saharareporters medium owned by one Sowore Omoleye and Okey Ndibe said that the Government spent 1.5 Billion Naira to stage the event, when, on the contrary, it was mainly sponsored by corporate organizations on the intervention of the Governor. When this could not fly, because everybody in Nigeria knows what is possible or not with Peter Obi, Okey, the nwa nza, after eating to his satisfaction, started to challenge his Chi. In his last piece (Sun of 27/9/11), he berated Chief Emeka Anyaoku for attending the event and for pouring encomiums on Obi.

From the foregoing, one could see how, blinded by passion some people thought to be reasonable, are utterly unreasonable. That his mentor, Dr. Chris Ngige attended the event did not mean anything to him, but for Anyaoku, Okonjo Iweala, Oby Ezekwesili and their likes attending was sacrilegious to him. Is this the Okey that we all thought that we knew? He is the living proof of the saying by Plutarch in his Lives that sometimes you discover the real lives of great men not through the greatest wars they have won or the greatest sieges they have undertaken, but through minor acts of them.

Because Okey is supporting Dr. Chris Ngie, whom a friend told me, without surety though, has promised him some political appointments if he becomes the next Governor of Anambra State, he does not see Ngige’s failings anymore. When Ngige illegally usurped the Governorship, he defended him on the reason that he was building roads. He even boasted that it was because of him that Ngige built the only road around Awka, the Amawbia by-pass, for Okey is from Amawbia. On the contrary, anybody who does not belong to the same political camp as Ngige is a demon that must be exorcised. This is why he has been on the offensive. His articles are derisive, written in periodic sentences whose clauses are lashes. He delights in seeing those lashes fall upon the likes of Akunyili, Andy Ubah, Soludo and Peter Obi. These are people he considers as possible stumbling blocks to his mentor, Ngige, becoming the next Governor and subsequently his grabbing a political appointment.

Because of Ngige, Okey has lost the sense of decorum and the sacred. For him to castigate those that attended the Anambra at 20 celebration in the pages of the newspapers (Sun of 27/9/11) and more pungently in his article on Saharareporters where he called Obi of Onitsha a king out of touch with his Kingdom; Soludo, a pseudo professional; Francis Cardinal Arinze, a failed Cardinal; Mustapha Chike Obi, a prodigal that betrayed his illustrious father; Oby Ezekwesili, a pretender; Dora Akunyili, a confused one; Archbishop Maxwell Anikwenwa, a retire cleric in search of rehabilitation; Bishop Owen Nwokolo, a new Bishop seeking friendship of the governor for whatever it is worth; Dr Dozie Ikedife, a candidate for senility; Chukwuemeka Ezeife, a canonized goat; among others names, is shocking, utterly shocking. As one read him, one could observe righteous indignation here and there. When people reacted angrily or perhaps on the advice of saner minds, they quickly removed the offending piece from Saharareporters.

He is a bad case of what maintaining a column should be. Columnists principally discuss issues. Columnists use their columns to draw attention to what should be done for the good of the society. Columnists use their columns to engage political leaders in manners that are edifying and even ennobling. For using his column as an instrument of blackmail and for settling political scores, Okey has presented himself as one who is unworthy to maintain a column. Perhaps, the judgement of Guardian was right.

Anambra @ 20 celebration remains one of the best things to have happened to Anambra State. After the event, I have been privileged to study its after effects. The celebration drew Anambra people closer on the need not to forsake the State. Today, I know what Mustapha Chike Obi has promised to do in the State as his own support. I am privileged to know that Mr. Okey Ezeibe and his foreign partners have equally hit the ground on investment in the State. I can go on and on.

Okey has become a case of an individual moving against the tide of development because of vested interest. We can do a rejoinder to his jaundiced pieces; we can frown at his futile attempt to attack the cream of our people; we can indulge him a little because his thinking is beclouded by passion, but we must continue to pity him for attempting to do violence to Anambra State as he has since done to himself.
Why has Okey taken everything that has to do with Obi with malice? The other day, when journalists visited Anambra to see what Obi was doing, Sowore and himself used their jointly owned Saharareporters outfit to publish the names of the journalists that came as if they had committed a crime? As for his vilification of the likes of Okonjo-Iweala, Obi of Onitsha, Francis Cardinal Arinze, the Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Jude Okolo, the Anglican Bishop on the Niger, Owen Nwokolo, Mustapha Chike-Obi, Dora Akunyili, Oby Ezekwesili, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, among others. Since it is not in his character to yield ground or apologise, we as Anambra people collectively apologise to them.

Ironically, while he was at his sadistic and pessimistic best, some of our people in Canada led by Mr. Chidi Asidanya were donating, on the 1st of October, over 20,000 volumes of books to Prof. Kenneth Dike Central Library, Awka. These young men who he knew when they were borne are shining example of how our people in the Diaspora can contribute to the development of the State.
May I take this opportunity to also call on those who have answered to the call of the Governor for collective efforts towards driving the development of the State not to be dampened. May those that are still prevaricating, jump on the bandwagon of development for our collective progress.
Anambra adibago nma; nye aka ka odi nma.

•Valentine Obienyem wrote from Awka
http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/news/national/2011/oct/04/national-04-10-2011-0018.html

Okay Ndibe may be a Ngige hatchet man afterall, professor or no professor.