By Myke Uzendu, Abuja
Mazi Sam Ohuabunwa, one of the leading contenders for the Presidential ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), yesterday in Abuja said that the urgent need to resolve the Nigeria conundrum and resolve the lingering Igbo question in Nigeria are the driving forces behind his quest for the office of Nigeria’s President.
Ohuabunwa, who spoke in Abuja at the Greater Nigeria Conference (GNC) which held at the International Conference Center (ICC), Abuja declared that “I am fully acquainted with both issues having been very active on both issues over many years”.
He regretted that a richly blessed country like Nigeria with both human and material resources would be in the sorry state it has found itself today, pointing out that it is no longer acceptable that Nigeria has remained a only a potentially great country.
His words: “Nigeria a blessed country by God with exceptional human and material endowments, a country with so much promise has remained only a “potentially great Country” which today is seen as the poverty capital of the World” with 71 per cent poverty level and 53 per cent unemployment among the Population, with one of the worst insecurity situations in the World, completely divided on all seams- a chronically underdeveloped 3rd World Country”
The Presidential hopeful blamed the current situation Nigeria found itself on “the extreme deviation of Nigeria from the fundamental structure on which our founding fathers established the Country as well as a “painful and distressing deficit of the stock of enlightened, visionary, competent and courageous leadership with integrity”
Ohuabunwa submitted that the Igbo question arose “primarily from the difficulty of many of our compatriots to accept the unique attributes of the Igbo and his unquenchable appetite for progress anchored on justice, equity and fairness”.
According to him, all the moves of the Igbo have been misconstrued, stressing that “His desire for economic empowerment and expression is wrongly interpreted as excessive acquisitiveness and love of money. His desire to develop his environment and make home everywhere he finds himself is misinterpreted as a desire to dominate others”.
Ohuabunwa stated that it is his desire to lead Nigeria to “become a globally competitive Nation that will become a first World Nation- achieving its manifest destiny to be the leader of Africa and the face of the Black man in the World”, adding that he would mobilize “like minded citizens to install enlightened, visionary and committed leadership in Nigeria”.
He pledged to run a collective leadership that would enthrone true democracy that is responsible and accountable in a truly “rejigged, re-engineered, restructured and revamped Nation that will set Nigeria, its federating units and all Nigerians free to flourish and prosper in a happy, mutually satisfying and beneficial united nation”.
