From Tony Osauzo and Ighomuaye Lucky, Benin
The Nigeria Christian Graduate Fellowship (NCGF), yesterday, said it would reject any attempt to foist on Nigerians clueless presidential candidates who have nothing to offer in this digital age.
National President of the group, Chuks Eboka, disclosed this in Benin while briefing newsmen on the recent killings that took place at St. Francis Catholic Church, Owo in Ondo State and other sundry issues in the country.
He said there are still some reliable persons across party lines who can be seen to be competent and very capable candidates that can provide good leadership for the country at this point in time even from the South East, thus the region should not be ruled out of the scheme of things.
Eboka stated that laying the background for free and fair elections include listening to the plea and cry of the South East for justice, adding that the South West should recall how other nationalities sympathised with them leading to the emergence of former president Olusegun Obasanjo as a balm on their wound after the annulment of the June 12 election.
Similarly, he said the South South should remember they just handed over to President Muhammadu Buhari, stressing that the warning-cry of some of the elder statesmen, including E. K. Clark and Ayo Adebanjo, should be heeded in the interest of justice and peace.
Eboka, a professor of Pharmacy, argued that the time is overdue to harness Nigeria’s resources properly, beginning with its vast human resources of technocrats and teeming youth population for good governance.
He observed that the poverty in the nation, which has earned the country, the disgraceful title of ‘the poverty capital of the world’, has obviously been of no concern to the political leaders, as demonstrated by the glee with which they paid obscene sums of money merely to obtain nomination forms for presidential and other elective positions, pointing out that spending huge sums of money to buy delegates at the primaries is indeed a show of shame.
Eboka further stressed that any aspirant for any political office, especially the presidency, who cannot take a public stand on the constitution is not fit to lead.
He said as the nation heads towards 70 years of independence, there is certainly an urgent need for a return to true federalism and nationalism as was practiced in the First Republic before the January 1966 military incursion, given all the indicators that the present structure is not working and indeed cannot work.