“Nigeria Needs A Fresh
Start”
Being a full text of the
Acceptance Speech of Engineer Yusuf Sani Yabagi, after he was elected the
Presidential candidate of the Action Democratic Party (ADP) on Sunday October 7
Dear country men and
women, let me thank the Almighty Allah for this wonderful opportunity and to
all of you members of our great party for electing me as the presidential
candidate of our great party at this momentous occasion.
I understand the enormity
of the responsibility that has been placed on my shoulders and the onerous
tasks it entails especially now that our dear country is in dire straits.
Obviously Nigeria needs a fresh start and a new dimension of leadership that is
focused, proactive and determined to restore the nation’s dignity through
effective, courageous and intelligent leadership.
Dear country men and
women, the Nigerian state in the last 58 years of its existence, has been
battered by successive years of poor, visionless, corrupt and reckless
leadership that turned a potentially rich country into pauper such that the
Brookings Institute and other renowned world agencies have produced statistics,
which declared Nigeria as the country with the most extreme poor people, in
other words, Nigeria is now officially the poverty capital of the world.
The situation becomes
even more disturbing because Nigeria just exited recession but according to the
Central Bank of Nigeria the country could still fall back into another
recession if some necessary steps are not taken to forestall such dangerous
development. 87 million of our citizens are said to be wallowing in the extreme
poverty category and a second recession will spell doom for the country.
It pains me greatly that
Nigeria, country richly blessed with people and brains is stuck in the
backwaters of economic malaise and political instability because of the
unimaginative policies our leaders have pursued which are basically predicated
on satisfying narrow political interests. Nigeria’s GDP is at 1.5% in the
second quarter GDP growth in 2018, for a country of 198 million people with a
population growth of 2.61 per cent according to the National Bureau of
Statistics (NBS).
Nigeria’s economy is
heavily dependent on oil but the most embarrassing aspect is that the leaders
have created a very disgusting system where crude oil is exported and refined
products are imported into the country under a subsidy system that is brimming
with unquantifiable level of corruption. The Nigerian economy has remained
largely unproductive in virtually all sectors and the situation has worsened in
the last three years of the government of the All Progressives Congress (APC)
led by President Muhammadu Buhari.
Global development
agencies have established that Nigeria has about 12 million out of school
children and the situation could get worse if urgent steps are not taking
to reverse this despicable trend. Inflation is still at double digit of 11.14%
and between 7 and 10 million people are reported to have lost their jobs in the
last three years, Foreign Direct Investments have drastically reduced and the
Nigeria’s currency, the naira has lost nearly 60% of its value because the
current leadership has failed to do proper planning on how to diversify a
troubled economy. This deluge of woes can only be the product of Ill- motivated
ambitions, sheer selfishness and corruption of leadership in Nigeria today.
These crises in our
economy have already begun to produce their concomitant vices as employment has
driven many hopeless young people into violent crimes such as armed robbery,
ritual killings, violence during elections, car snatching, advanced fee fraud,
drug abuse among others. Many of our young people have perished in the deserts
of North Africa and the Mediterranean trying to flee the harsh conditions at
home in search of greener pastures outside the shores of Nigeria.
Dear country men and
women, it is not my intention to bore you with a long speech about our problems
but it is pertinent to interrogate our situation in order to find the
appropriate solutions to them. I therefore stand before you to offer hope for a
new beginning which our party the ADP represents.
The experience I have
gathered over the years, serving humanity in my little capacity,
has imbued me with the steadfastness, vision, discipline and foresight
which I intend to bring to if I am given the chance to become your
president in 2019. The international community has recognized my efforts
and crowned it with an award of humanitarian service for the development of
Africa’s economy conferred on me by the United Nations on September 13.
My vision is to transform
the economy through massive investment in agriculture, industry manufacturing,
and food processing by the establishment of cottage industries across the 774
local governments in the country tp provide jobs for the unemployed. This
is the only way the country can change and the issue of insecurity ravaging
parts of country can be easily curtailed.
So, let’s work together
to make Nigeria great again.
I thank you.
Source:Wailersng
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