Kemi Olaitan in Ibadan
Former Senate Leader, Senator Teslim Folarin, has urged politicians in the country to focus on how delivering good governance to Nigerians instead of dissipating energy on who becomes President in 2023.
Folarin, who spoke to journalists during the weekend after donating a 500kva transformer to his Oja-Igbo community in Ibadan, declared the statement credited to the Governor of Kaduna State, Malam Nasir El Rufai, that zoning would be jettisoned in 2023 for competence was too early for deliberation.
The Senator representing Oyo Central Senatorial District said that it would be unfair to Nigerians to be talking about 2023 when the last election was conducted just few months ago and insisted that “our people deserve good governance.”
According to him: “2023 is still very far. But I know that the dynamic will change before then. It is normal because we have a President who is not coming back in 2023. Because of that, the race will start much earlier. Everybody has to be very careful now because the position of the President depends largely on the party. And also, the office of the President is like a moving train. If you stand in front of it, it will crush you.
“I expect a lot of jostling, alignments and realignments in the next one year but now, I think what we should do is to focus on how to deliver dividends of democracy to our people. I was a senator for eight years and out of office for another eight years and I understand our people need good governance. Anybody can say anything but when the time comes, we will see how it goes.
Folarin pledged to ensure that many Nigerians who are casual workers with multinational companies would be absorbed as staff and rise to the top enchelon of their respective organisation as the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Local Content.
He said: “We discovered that Nigerians have capacity to do what expatriates are doing and we need to train them. We want to know why Nigerians are not involved in the top enchelon of the oil companies in Nigeria and see how they can be embraced to top management positions. We are going to do a great job for Nigerians in that aspect.”
