From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
The presidential aspirant on the platform of the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP), Dr Usman Bugaje, has stated that he is on a mission contesting the 2023 presidential election to rescue the country from total collapse.
Speaking after obtaining the party’s expression of interest and nomination forms in Abuja on Friday, he lamented that the gruesome crime perpetrated in the country is “symptomatic of the decomposition of our human society.”
The former National Secretary of the Action Congress (AC), specifically noted that apart from; “Nigeria not working, worse still it is become one of the most dangerous places on the globe.”
“Our country is going though an unprecedented adversity, misery and frustration, which have literally exasperated life and put citizens on the edge, with such irritability as would spark violence at the slightest of provocations. Every now and then one hears about some gruesome crime and the constant desecration of human lives, symptomatic of the decomposition of our human society.
“There is hardly an institution of government delivering on its mandate or meeting the expectation of its citizens. Simply put Nigeria is not working, but worse still it is become one of the most dangerous places on the globe. Meanwhile its peers are all well ahead catching up with the first world. This is clearly the culmination of the two decades of bad governance.
“To be sure, in the last 23 years, poverty has more than doubled, hundreds of thousands of young people have not found jobs, our infrastructure has been decaying without renewal, worst of all insecurity has escalated to levels that have made life literally impossible. It has led to prolong school closures; it has impoverished poor rural communities, it has crippled agriculture causing food shortages that can lead to famine and displaced hundreds of thousands of people, disrupting their lives and traumatizing their psyche.
“Governance has been defined by pilferage, wastage, prodigality and mind-boggling corruption. Our political culture has been pedestrian, defined by money and violence while caught into the web of politics of big men rather than the politics of big ideas,” he lamented.
On the solutions to the litany of challenges confronting the country, he said: “I don’t believe that there is one person, no matter how knowledgeable, no matter how competent and no matter how credible that alone can fix the problems of this complex country. I believe we need a team of the most competent, the most credible, the most passionate Nigerians working together day and night without fear of favor, to fix the problems of this country.
“This is what we call a collegiate leadership, a team of leaders drawn from every part of this country, reflecting gender and generational diversity, focused on making a difference and rescuing our country from the precipice, as it were.
“Myself and my colleagues are going to make that difference. We are that difference, for we are not big men, but we are men and women who can access big ideas, with the passion, the courage, the credibility and the competence to salvage our country from the abyss and put it back on the trajectory of hope, of justice, of development, of jobs and prosperity,” he said.
