A Labour Party chieftain, Pat Utomi, has said Peter Obi’s presidential campaign team will set up donation portals which will be made public by next week.
“It is those young people who will give from their allowances, what they earn working here; $10 but these portals are not up yet but they will be up next week or so and eventually we are going to be able to access resources from the diaspora,” Utomi said on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics programme.
Obi, the 61-year-old former Anambra State governor running for President on the platform of the Labour party, has been on a tour abroad for days, meeting diaspora Nigerians.
On Obi’s diaspora consultations, Utomi, a former presidential candidate and the founder of Centre for Values in Leadership said, “It will be totally unthoughtful if we don’t engage Nigerians in the diaspora because that relief for Nigeria will come from them; it is a clear way of implementing strategy. You underestimate what the diaspora can do.
“Nigeria is actually on a life support system held up by the diaspora. So, if we get these diaspora – all these people sending money for burial, for basic survival, eating, everything, it’s going to free us from this pressure by making the country work.”
Utomi, who described the ‘Obidient Movement’ as a revolution for the liberation of the black man, said young people will give of their allowances to support the presidential ambition of Obi.
He said, “When the time is right, the diaspora will give money; they have always given money to campaigns. I ran for president before and I got support from the diaspora in 2006 and 2007 and when I ran in 2011.
“When the time is right, we are going to obviously solicit from Nigerians across the board. We are setting up portals where people can give money…But right now, we are on a sensitisation tour about what makes democracy work. Right now, Nigeria’s democracy is not working because of the transaction cost that are involved; the trade-off that has to be made.”
