Former Member of the House of Representatives, Dr Usman Bugaje, has described the conversation around the emergence of a Northern or Southern Presidential candidate among the coalition as clear evidence of lack of development initiative.
He said that conversation does not support any development programme around the critical issues of economy, environment, security, and other development issues that should preoccupy the minds of politicians.
Dr Bugaje said leaders should begin to think about how best they can improve the quality of life of the people as against mere pursuit of political power towards selfish ends.
Bugaje was a guest on Arise TV Morning show on Thursday.
He said; “Look, this conversation about North and South is coming from the emptiness of our politics. The politicians have nothing to offer. If they had, let them put their ideas on the table. I am going to go for a president irrespective of where he comes from. Once he is a Nigerian, he has the idea to fix this country.
“In this 21st century, we are still talking about North and South. In any case, we have tried the Northern president, we have tried the Southern president. What have they done? I have not seen anything.”
He tasked the Media and Nigerians to talk less about personality movement from one party to the other stressing that such movement was not in any way connected to the development of the country.
“We must ask ourselves, what is wrong with the kind of democracy we are having? What is wrong with the kind of way we are doing things? These are the kinds of conversations that I think we should be engaged in. I mean, if X, Y, Z, former governor, former this, wants to be in a coalition, that is this business.
“What do I care for, what does he represent? What does he want to do? How can his movement from one place to the other really create the kind of changes that we are looking forward to? Remember, this country is increasing in population. In the next 25 years, this country is going to be well over 400 million.
“We are going down the drain. The country is getting poorer. Hunger, pain, disease, and poverty are what are increasing.
“There’s more hunger, more poverty. And in all fairness to what out here, if you watch the last election, we interrogated them with the facts. But you see, like you said rightly, most of these politicians have no ideas.
“The fact that 25 years of democracy has not delivered development. Look at all the indices.”
The activist said; “We don’t want to know what party you come from. We want to know what your party represents. We don’t want to know whether you are from the north or the south.
“We need to raise issues that these politicians are not prepared to face. We need to put them on their toes and ask them to come and explain.
“What party you represent does not matter. Come and tell us. What does your party represent? What do you want to offer beyond the Northern South kind of thing? So by engaging them.”
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