Obinna Odogwu, Abakaliki
A presidential aspirant for the 2019 General Elections, Prof. Kingsley Moghalu, has blamed the nation’s poor leadership over the years on a pattern of rotational presidencies between Northern and Southern Nigeria.
He said that the arrangement promotes poor leadership and creates avenues for incompetent leaders to emerge because, according to him, competent aspirants to the position would have been deprived of the a fair shot and opportunity.
The former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) stated this in Abakaliki, the Ebonyi State capital, during the inauguration of the Kingsley Moghalu Support Organization at Monablis Hotels.
Moghalu argued that career politicians in the country often sell the idea of rotational presidencies to whip up unnecessary sentiments which, he said, beclouds the reasoning of the voting population, who end up voting in incompetent leaders.
He appealed to Nigerians to do away with the idea, arguing that since the many problems plaguing the country were not zoned, it was unnecessary for anyone to put stock in a rotational presidency.
“There is no zoning in the Nigeria constitution. It is a miff that the presidency is not the turn of anywhere. The presidency is the turn of any competent Nigerian whom the Nigerian people found worthy of keeping the responsibility of becoming president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,” the presidential aspirant said.
“We are in a democracy and I think it is time we stopped wasting our time on this discussion. The career politicians who are selling this falsehood do not want you to elect good leaders. They want you to remain in poverty and joblessness. Is that what Nigerians want? Time has come to select a Nigerian who can do the job. A Nigerian who can fix the country.
“It does not matter where that person comes from. Let me ask you a question: is unemployment zoned? Is poverty zoned to any part of this country? Is ‘no electricity’ zoned? So, if our problems are not zoned to anybody, why should selecting leadership that will fix these problems be zoned?” he queried.
The presidential hopeful said, if elected, he would heal Nigeria and restore its economy, as well as create jobs to address the country’s growing unemployment rate and poverty.
“My first priority is to heal Nigeria. Then, we have to restore Nigeria’s economy. So, those are very important priorities. Again, creating jobs, addressing unemployment and poverty, which the country is sinking deeper into, are my concerns.
Moghalu said that he would soon unveil the political platform on which he would breathe life to his ambition.
He said that as a technocrat, he would fight piracy by properly and specifically tasking the law enforcement agencies towards that direction if voted into power.
“Our law enforcement agencies have not been tasked specifically with the fight against piracy; piracy of intellectual property. We have copy right laws in this country. So, we need to pay more attention to that,” he added.