Nigeria presidential hopeful Obi on manifesto delay

The Nigerian presidential contender Peter Obi has stated that he will wait to release his platform until he has heard from the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC).

Mr. Obi, a Labour Party candidate, has come under fire for failing to make public his policy proposals before the start of the election season two weeks ago.

However, Mr. Obi told the BBC that Nigeria lacked "institutional weakness and political will to adopt good ideas and policies," rather than a lack of ideas or recorded programs.

Only Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the three front-runners, have made public statements about how they would govern Nigeria if chosen.

Mr. Obi, a two-time governor of the state of Anambra in south-eastern Nigeria, where there are protests by groups seeking a breakaway Biafra state, declared that he is a strong believer in Nigeria and that his solution for the various "agitations across the country" is to engage in dialogue and come to an agreement.

He claimed that the insecurity problem is Nigeria's top priority since it has taken on existential proportions and "has to be dealt with head-on decisively."

“If you deal with it [security] today, you deal with inflation because farmers would go back to farms and that would reduce food inflation,” he said.