From Abdulrazaq Mungadi, Gombe
Ahead of the 2023 presidential election, a group of supporters of the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele, converged on Gombe and called on him to contest for the presidency.
The group, known as The Unified Northern Nigeria Youths’ Forum., said Emefiele had the capacity to salvage Nigeria and that he could make hundreds of millionaires in his first four years.
“This is largely seen in the intervention programmes he initiated as the CBN governor that is mostly targeting the development of agriculture. He initiated several intervention programmes that have a greater impact on the North and northerners.”
Emefiele has not declared to run for the top office in 2023.
However, Mohammad Salihu Danlami, the convener of the group, which is said to be made up of about 40 youths organisations from the North, said: “The CBN governor needs to reason with us and burry his personal interest and contest for the betterment of Nigeria.”
Danlami who stated this while addressing newsmen, yesterday, in Gombe, said: “It is an established fact, that there exists a strong nexus between poverty, human security, national insecurity, and food insecurity.
“With Emefiele at the helm of affairs, poverty will be alleviated as well as youth restiveness and other social vices.
“Through his interventions in agriculture and actively engaging idle youths who are a soft target for recruitment into various insurgency groups and consequently clamping down on insecurity.”
While urging stakeholders in Gombe State to stand with his group in supporting and calling for Emefiele’s presidency in 2023, Danlami said the group see hope, vision, commitment and security for the future in the CBN governor.
He said: “Posterity will not judge us right and history will not be fair to us, if we, as northerners, refuse to support Godwin Emefiele as our only presidential candidate in the North.”
Danlami also called on All Progressives Congress and the Peoples Democratic Party or whichever political party in the country to look into the possibility of adopting Emefiele as its presidential candidate for 2023.