THE presidential candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), Gen. Muhammadu Buhari  and  his  All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) counterpart Ibrahim Shekarau  yesterday  restated their resolve  to tackle  the nation’s problems . The two candidates spoke on different occasions.

At a public presentation of the party’s manifesto in Lagos yesterday, Buhari  and his running mate Tunde Bakare said the five major areas that their  administration would concentrate on would be  security, raising the standard of education, providing quality services at all levels, aggressive pursuit of youth development and youth employment generation and total disarming of the Niger Delta.

According to Buhari, “ the CPC government will seek the disarmament of all criminal gangs in the nation and also secure the entire polity. On education, we shall rehabilitate all dilapidated infrastructure while we are going to make it a must to find  a solution to the Niger Delta social problems and we will lay down a comprehensive blueprint for the development of the area.”

He added that along the way, “CPC also intends to make this nation accountable and corruption-free, and bring morality back to governance. We shall make this nation uncomfortable to those who do not wish to play by the rules.”

To achieve these , the CPC presidential candidate said Nigerians must be prepared for change and vote for the right candidate. “For the past 12 years, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has bastardized the nation. In all this period, it has done very little that is right even less than is proper, and nothing intrinsically useful or cost effective.”

Buhari  also  chided  the PDP for the several communal and religious crises in the country, saying: “What stopped them from securing the nation from communal, religious and political violence and from the new wave of terrorism? How many years do they need to do that?”

Bakare said the CPC would also pursue aggressive amendment of the constitution to remove the immunity clause for public officers and guarantee a state of community police. “CPC will also address the federal structure with the aim of reviewing it,” he added.

Shekarau declared that for the nation’s woes to be checked ,  leadership, especially at the central government level, should be held responsible, even as he urged  the electorate to seize the opportunity of the April polls to break away from the past.

Though, yesterday’s event held under the auspices of the Congress of Political Leaders, a non-partisan association of political leaders cutting across ethno-religious breadth of the country, was supposedly not a campaign rally, the ANPP candidate easily turned it  into one, drawing repeated applause from the crowd at  the event in Lagos.

Also present at the event were former Lagos State governor, Alhaji Lateef Kayode Jakande, founder of the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) Dr. Frederick Fasehun, and representatives of each of the six states of the Southwest geo-political zone.

Speaking under the theme: “The challenges of good governance in Nigeria,” Shekarau lamented the country’s fall from one of the 20 strongest economies in the world at independence in 1960, to number 40. He said while structural problems could partially be blamed, lack of policy consistency and bad governance  were the main culprits.

Shekarau noted : “When other emerging nations were building the infrastructure for industrialization, Nigeria was faced with political crisis that eventually culminated in a civil war. At that time, South Korea started laying the foundation of its industrialization by building the basic industry of iron and steel, and today it remains one of the best examples of rapid industrialization in modern history.”

But as part of the problems confronting the political elite on whose  shoulders  rests the task of governance , Jakande said  a lack of ideological direction, party discipline and selfish ambition may have contributed immensely to the  parlous state the nation has found itself. Jakande condemned  the lack of ideological commitment on the part of politicians, which makes them switch political party affiliations  so often.

This remark also drew support from Shekarau, who pointed accusing fingers at the members of National Assembly. He noted that even before the National Assembly amended the constitution to suit indiscriminate decamping of political office holders from one political party to another, the trend had already reached an embarrassing proportion. “But because many of the members  were  beneficiaries of the system, nobody was saying anything, ” he added.

Also,  in the pursuit of free, fair and credible 2011 elections ,  the police have begun a stakeholders meeting in the South-South geo-political zone. The conference that was held in Asaba revolved around efficient security management, efficient information management to create the needed voters’ awareness and confidence-building which requires cultivating the trust of the general public for agencies saddled with conducting the 2011 elections.

-Guardian

Posted by admin on Apr 7 2011. Filed under Latest Politics, Muhammadu Buhari (1983-85, 2015 - 2023), Niger Delta, Presidency. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry