Emameh Gabriel in Abuja
Ahead of 2023 presidential election, Nigerians youths have been urged to rise up and retrieve their country from corrupt and incompetent leaders seeking to seize power next year.
The call was made yesterday in Abuja by professionals under the aegis of Nigerian Professionals for Peter Obi (NPPO), who charged youths in the country to seize the opportunity presented by the 2023 polls to achieve a paradigm shift in leadership by ensuring that Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of Labour Party(LP) is elected.
Speaking at a press conference, the National Convener of the group,Dr. Ikechukwu Stanley, described Obi as the most qualified candidate of all the candidates jostling for the Presidency of Nigeria who “offers hope of unity, shared prosperity and economic recovery, collective progress, security and renewed nationalism, as his records in both private business and public sector have shown. The NPPO stated: “At no time in the history of this nation is the quest for good leadership more exigent than now. With youth unemployment and underemployment at a staggering 63.5 per cent, 82.9 million people living in abject poverty making Nigeria the world’s poverty capital, 20 million out of school children according to UNESCO report, inflation rate at 20.52 per cent, second most corrupt country in West Africa, an endless ASUU strike and insecurity at its worst since independence.”
“Our country is in dire straits and in need of urgent intervention to halt the downward slide.”
“It is this pitiable state of the federation and the need to salvage the country from thieving rent seekers, and, corrupt establishment proponents, that has provoked the wave of youth consciousness sweeping through the country evidenced in the Obidient Movement.
“The youthful majority that has been either absent or relegated to the background in the leadership recruitment process of the nation, have realised that if they do not retrieve their country from incompetent, clueless and corrupt charlatans, masquerading as leaders, they may have no country to call their own, tomorrow.”
The group asserted that Peter Obi is the choice of Nigerian youths because he “embodies the hope and the ideals that can birth the nation we collectively crave.”
Also speaking, a Lead Member of the NPPO, Ms. Progress Okuk, said the perception that LP has no structure to win a presidential election was a distraction.
Okuk said that Obi’s structure was the millions of his supporters willing to pull resources together to finance his campaign.
“The Obi movement is like a child that an entire village agreed to train and watch him grow. So that when he becomes president, he will feel obligated to the people.
“He will respect us because he saw how the people put their hands together to nurture him. So he will be accountable to us,” she said.
