The Chief advocate of Nigeria Agenda Advocacy, Niyi Akinsujo
ARMSTRONG ALLAHMAGANI, Bauchi –
The Chief Advocate of The Nigeria Agenda Advocacy, Niyi Akinsujo, has charged Nigerians not to allow politicians exploit their emotions and psychology for their own advantages.
This is just as he called on them to choose leaders in the 2023 general elections beyond ethnicity, religion and riches.
He stated this in an interview with journalists shortly after a visit to the renowned Islamic Scholar, Sheikh Dahiru Bauchi, at his residence in Bauchi on Tuesday to seek for his blessings on the objectives of their group.
“Politicians will always be politicians, I am also a politician, but I am calling on them, they would always appeal to the sentiments to exploit the emotions and psychology of the citizens.
“My call is for them to review whatever the politicians are telling them and that the politicians are actually exploiters of emotions and they are going to harvest these emotions to their own advantages.
“The citizens should start looking out for themselves now and they should see themselves as brothers and sisters across ethnicity, across religion and that way, they will find commonality as citizens of Nigeria.
“Our political direction, opinion and standing should not be determined by ethnicity, it should not be determined by what religion we belong to and it should not be determined by the quantum of wealth an individual holds.
“I am hoping that as we commence this campaign, a Nigerian citizen will evolve beyond recruiting political office holders beyond the sentiments if these days’ considerations of religion, ethnicity and of money,” he said.
Speaking on which region the next President of the country should come from, he said: “I am praying that the next President comes from Nigeria.”
Continuing, he said: “I have no fear about 2023, I believe that by the intent of our advocacy, we would be able to provide enough enlightenment and education to the average Nigerians to take decisions objectively. This is because, all these while, we are more than 60 years as an independent nation, those issues that have hunted us pre-independence and immediately after independence are still hunting us and this means that there are no solutions in sight.
Akinsujo stated that The Nigeria Agenda Advocacy, was formed because of their concern over the political colouration of the Nigerian environment adding that they realized that there are so many cleavages in the country and so many violent exponents of these cleavages.
He said: “Meanwhile, everybody talks in different circles about these Nigerian divergences but we believe that Nigeria has evolved into a nation despite the fact that some people are trumpeting the fact that Nigeria is yet to be a nation.
“While we are talking for our individual regions, our individual tribes and ethnicity, nobody seems to be talking for Nigeria and we decided that there is a need to talk for Nigeria because it impacts our political character, it impacts our economic development and our social condition.
“Thankfully, we are in a democracy, everybody has a the right to express his opinion, but we are feeling that we have more negative and limiting expression of sentiments in the public space coming from these other cleavages than for Nigeria.
“So, we are trying to put the Nigerian perspective in the space and to also insist that it is the Nigerian citizen that is the important element in all these things that we are talking about. This is because these distracting thoughts and opinions will pull the Nigerian citizens in different directions so much that they end up being confused.”
