Ahead of the 2023 general elections, Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige Thursday assured Nigerians that he possessed everything they yearned for in a new President.
Ngige, a frontline presidential aspirant on the platform of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC), said the next president of Nigeria must be visionary, intelligent, courageous and firm.
According to him, the country needs a President with capacity and experience who must be in charge.
He spoke at the public presentation of Chief Chekwas Okorie’s book, titled, “APGA and the Igbo Question.”
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Ngige described himself as eminently qualified to contest for the office of the President, saying he owed apologies to nobody for throwing his hat into the ring.
He said, “We need leaders who are visionary. As a leader, you must see what others didn’t see. We need leaders who are intelligent. You must be intelligent to see what others are not able to see.
“You must have the capacity and experience. What have you done with the position given to you in the past? You must be courageous to take difficult decisions. You can’t be a leader and people are pushing you around. You are the captain. You must be courageous.”
“I am a presidential aspirant. There is no apologies about that. I have capacity and my wealth of experience is there. I have twice been minister of the most difficult ministry in Nigeria. I have the brain. I am compassionate.”
Ngige said as a result of his compassion, during COVID-19 he wrote a memo to the President requesting that members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) should be paid for the nine months they were on strike and the President being equally compassionate, graciously granted the request.
He said amidst economic challenges such that previous administrations would have found an excuse either to downsized or rightsize the workforce, this administration did none of that.
“I put before a compassionate President, quality pieces pro-people advice and jobs were saved . I intervened when banks and financial institutions declared unilateral redundancy, sacking thousands of workers and saved jobs. I did same in the oil and gas sector.”
The minister, however, took a swipe at Nigerian elite, saying they have been unkind to the country.
“I am part of the elite. It is the elite of Nigeria that introduced the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). It is the elite of Nigeria that ruled with the military and brought us where we are today.
“We are talking as if the problem started with Buhari or Jonathan. It did not start with them. The locusts visited Nigeria. The locusts are the elite. They ate up the green leaves on the tree. Luckily, the tree is still standing with the branches. We need to water the tree and put manure.”
Ngige said the elite were not only vindictive but also tyrannical, adding that they had not shown fairness to the ordinary Nigerians, especially those who didn’t go to school.
“We, the elite take our own and take their own. It is not only Buhari that received the vindictiveness of the elite, every Nigerian has. However, there is light at the end of the tunnel. 2023 is here.”
The former Anambra State Governor described Chief Chekwas Okorie as a Guerilla fighter who doesn’t give up easily, adding that even when all had betrayed and left him, he fights for the principle he believes in.
He thanked Okorie for acknowledging his role in the formation of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) when they saw the injustice meted out to Ndigbo in the then ruling party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and needed a fallback position to save themselves as a result of survival instinct.
He recalled that as a PDP Governor, the Alliance for Democracy (AD) led by Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Bisi Akande, Segun Osoba and Niyi Adebayo made overtures to him to join the party, but he declined.
The minister said he turned down Okorie’s overtures to join APGA, which he saw as homecoming because they needed to forge a pan Nigerian party.
Earlier, Okorie described his book as a product of his 46 years involvement in Igbo rights crusade, human rights and political activism from 1976 when he was an undergraduate at the University of Nigeria Enugu Campus till date.
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