PATRICK ABANG, Calabar –
As Nigeria prepares for the 2023 presidential election, Prof. Iyorwuese Hagher, Chairman, Contact & Advocacy Council of Dr. Bukola Saraki Presidential Campaign Organisation, has said the moment cannot afford to gamble in the selection of its leader.
Prof. Hagher disclosed this in Calabar at PDP Secretariat when his team visited Cross River State stakeholders ahead of the PDP primaries.
He said the biggest failure of Nigeria is that “We have failed to provide the correct leadership, to harness the resources of this country for the overall betterment of the entire country”.
“This is the only country that have managed to waste 500 trillion dollars by successive administrations, that money was supposed to link all the major towns in the country; through rail system, bus systems, complete road system, 24 hours uninterrupted power supply, but instead, the money has been wasted”, he lamented.
“Despite these, the last seven years, we have had the worst insecurity we have had in this country since independence. The time has come for us to do something different; the type of leaders we have now, especially in the APC, if we allow four more years of APC, we will be picking Nigeria in pieces”
“Today, we have less then 3 million Nigerians consuming 90 percent of Nigeria’s revenue. This include the president, governors, entire civil service, National Assembly, local government chairmen, their special assistants, they are not up to 3 million, but they consume 90 percent of Nigeria’s revenue; these means we have bad leaders who are bad managers. We cannot have a country like this”, he lamented.
Professor Hagher, who is the former Nigerian ambassador to Mexico, earlier said the Saraki’s presidential campaign team was in Cross River to sensitize and inform the PDP stakeholders in the state to elect Dr. Bukola Saraki as the PDP flag bearer in the next presidential election.
” We have come here because, Saraki is a very humble man, he doesn’t want to go ahead and declare without informing the delegates, about his intention to run for President”.
Responding, the state PDP chairman, Venatius Ikem said, ” I have the highest respect for his (Saraki) capacity, and I believe it is ultimately God that gives power, we will do our best; as chairman, I have to manage all the contending aspirations, that come to us both at federal and state levels.
“We have all seen what politics has done to us, ultimately we are now agreeing on looking at how we can contribute to salvage this country by looking at who is able and capable to lead us; because the next presidency is going to be very difficult, Nigeria is over borrowed, in practical terms, what it means is that last year Nigeria used 4 trillion naira to service debts; that is just to pay interest and other charges on the loan, and if you recall, our budget was about 4 trillion, that means very soon, we will be using half of the budget to finance debts, and using half of the budget to run this country”.
“So we are heading to a very serious disaster. By the time we start removing subsidies on everything and reducing the work force, there will be real hardship, so we need people who have capacity; who can navigate their way through the economy and other sectors come 2023,” Ikem said.
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