Europe Needs Africa More Than Africa Needs Europe, Peter Obi Sparks Outrage with Explosive London Speech

Presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr. Peter Obi, has said that the success of the African continent is the success of Europe and the failure of the continent is the failure of Europe. He said the consequences of any of this will affect Europe more than even Africa itself.

Obi made the remark while speaking to some European businessmen in London recently.

He said most countries in Europe and the Western world have little knowledge about Nigeria and Africa, and because of their little knowledge about Africa, they rarely bring Africa into perspective when making some high profile decisions.

He told the gathering that Africa is the last frontier of global development, adding that it is the second biggest continent in terms of size and population. He insisted that the continent also has the highest amount of natural resources in the world.

He noted that the African continent has a popular of over 60% young people, but quickly added that despite the huge population in the continent, it's a continent of mass poverty and hunger.

The NDC presidential candidate said Nigeria has 50 percent of the population of the European Union, saying the EU has about 450m while only Nigeria has about 240m people, making it 50percent of the European Union population.

Peter Obi, who many say is very good at statistics and data, also revealed that Nigeria has a landmass of about 4m square kilometer.

In terms of wealth, Peter Obi said while Europe has per capita of 40,000 dollars, Nigeria which is over 50% of the EU population is about two and half of that of Europe. So, you can see the potential for growth in Africa. This is where the trouble also lies.

He then added that if Africa turns around, the biggest beneficiary will be the Europe Union, if it collapses, the consequence will affect more of Europe than Africa.

He said with the common grounds so far mentioned, Nigeria and Europe can work together to achieve a collective goal and help build a more economically viable Nigeria.

While working together may be a possibility, he said the biggest problem in Nigeria is the challenge of leadership.

"The problem of Africa remains leadership, to have a political leadership that is competent, has the capacity, compassion, commitment and character to be able to deal with the issues of corruption, law and order," Obi said.

This is leadership that can focus on investing in critical areas of development, which is health, education and pulling people out of poverty and hunger.

Though Peter Obi agreed that there are killings, kidnappings, other criminalilties in Nigeria, he said the western world needed to look at issues that are driving these occurrences in Nigeria.

He said: "When you have a huge population. For example, Nigeria has over 100 million people living in multi-dimensional poverty. There are millions of out of school children or the ones that that didn’t go to school at all.

"With mass poverty and mass uneducated people, you have rooms for easy recruitment for all forms of criminalities which is now driving all sorts of killings that we need to deal with.

"Ive been moving around and saying, we need support, we need you to help us to overcome this and to create a clear developing environment that will also benefit you, because it is a huge market for you.

"It is a huge advantage in terms of resources and everything, if Africa especially Nigeria, is doing very well because it's the most populous country in Africa.

"It has all it takes to be a huge market that Europe just like Africa can have. And to turn around Africa, you must turn around Nigeria because it is the country that drives the rest of Africa. To develop Africa which will benefit you, you must start from Nigeria.

"I know it requires several visits to be able to intimate you more on this commitment, on this strategy that I want you to go down with us and be able to help us to turn around Africa, Nigeria in particular."