By Henry Uche
As political candidates continue in radical, offensive and defensive campaigns across the country, Nigerians have been warned to be wary of flowery and orated manifestoes presented by majority of political parties and their candidates.
This was even as they (Nigerians) were alerted to be cautious of rhetorical promises dished out by spokespersons of different political parties who had from the beginning left no stone unturned to embellish their principals at different forums.
Nigerians will go to the polls on Saturday, February 25, to choose their next crop of political leaders. Whoever the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declares president- elect will steer the ship of the country for the next four years. Whether the retrogressive economic condition of the country would be aggravated or ameliorated depends on who eligible voters elect.
For this reason, eligible voters are admonished to ‘look before they leap’ if they must not suffer another affliction after this time.
In a virtual town hall session – an Initiative of Africa Leadership Group (ALG), Nigeria Leadership Series, with the theme, “The Manifesto For A New Nigeria” participants raised the alarm warning every voter to shun sentiments and elect leaders who are not only selfless but has the character, capacity and competence to cause a quick positive change.
Just last week in similar virtual session, a majority of Nigerians emphatically avowed that it was high time Nigerians put an end to kakistocracy, gerontocracy and kleptocracy rulership that have kept the country in economic deceleration.
Currently over 200 million Nigerians are going through unprecedented and undeserved excruciating pains with the exemption of some political elites. The reasons are not far -fetched: Maladministration and mismanagement of public resources by incompetent hands in government.
Today, Nigeria is enmeshed with over N44tr debt burden with its ballooning debt servicing, to low productivity, high unemployment and underemployment, epileptic power sector, hyper – galloping inflation, intimidating exchange rate, decayed infrastructure, incorrigible corruption, blooming insurgency, feeble private sector among others.
Given these sad economic realities, the Chief spokesperson for Labour Party, LP- PCC, Yunusa Tanko, said his party has the elixir to fix Nigeria’s multilayered problems.
According to him, the manifesto of the party has it all, and available for anyone to peruse and critique. “We have a robust foreign policy, we shall have respect for the rule of law, focus on production and export economy, ensure food security and more importantly Nigerians in diaspora would begin to think home because there would be peace and progress,” he affirmed.
Speaking for PDP, Mr. Daniel Bwala, expressed optimism in Atiku abilities saying, his principal has the capacity to fix Nigeria problems, but should APC win the presidential election, Nigeria would degenerate from worse to worst.
According to him, Atiku would govern every nooks and crannies of the country unlike the APC government whose administration and appointments were not only lopsided but witnessed ungoverned spaces especially in the North. “We shall embark on multilayered policing, amend the constitution for sound governance and we shall address injustice. We shall prioritize intelligence gathering to address insecurity” he stressed.
On his part, a member of APC Presidential Campaign Council
Opeoluwa Dapo-Thomas, at the session, averred that APC would fix the insecurity problem within some weeks if his principal- Bola Ahmed Tinubu is elected.
He also affirmed that Tinubu would give State governments more powers. “We shall take tough decisions to address issues affecting the country,”