After series of consultation with stakeholders across the country, a businessman, Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim, on Tuesday declared interest to contest the 2023 presidency on the platform of the All Progressives Congress, saying, “This is not another empty promise of another politician, I’m who I am.”
He said a new and better Nigeria is possible despite the fact that the country is presently gripped in the claws of insecurity, worsening energy crises due to absence of local refining of petroleum products and inadequate electricity generation, transmission and distribution.
Olawepo-Hashim, who was the presidential candidate of the People’s Trust in the 2019 election, is set to pick his nomination form on Thursday at the APC secretariat in Abuja.
He explained that the “current political trajectory of the country is dim and dark, as deep ethnic cleavages and bigotry have dominated the landscape accentuating the crises, undermining any initiative for a cohesive national redemption.”
The presidential aspirant added, “The culprit for this immediate state of affairs are the dominant elite of Nigeria across party lines whose raison d’ etre has been self-interest and personal aggrandisement especially in the past 24 years after the unfortunate decades of military rule.”
The aspirant maintained that although the initial patriotic national ethos of great leaders of the First Republic which made Nigeria one of the leading countries of Asia and Africa with comparative GDP with Malaysia and Thailand has been effectively buried in the rubbles, there, notwithstanding, still exists an incredible reservoir of national energy capable of pulling the nation from the ruins and destruction, and for the construction of a new and better Nigeria.
He said, “This abundant energy is able to bring light to overshadow the darkness that is enveloping our nation. There is a fire in the belly of an average patriotic Nigerian, which when lit, is able to consume any imaginable size of evil.
“I have stepped out to ignite that fire, in my decision to seek the Presidency of the Federal Republic of Nigeria during the 2023 elections.
“Mine is not an ambition but a historic burden. It is a burden imposed on me right from my late teens when as an undergraduate youth activist, my generation committed ourselves to the struggle for social and economic development of Nigeria, as well as to the struggle for democratic rule.
“There is nothing Nigerians cannot achieve with the right environment and support. I am out to give the leadership to create that environment.”
Olawepo-Hashim promised that his plan to build a new Nigeria as encapsulated in a 50 -point agenda would be publicly presented soon.
He stated, “A modern Nigeria capable of securing itself from internal and external threats, provide jobs for her teeming youth currently unemployed through a sustainable economic development plan, and reduce the scourge of poverty and corruption is possible and realisable.
“By reason of accident, my father came from Northern Nigeria and my mother from the South. Some of my family members are Christians while the others are Muslims.
“I have lived and schooled in both North and South as well as in Europe and America. I know that all human beings are born equal and deserving of equal rights, opportunities and justice.
“I will do justice to all without discrimination on account of ethnicity, religion and gender. This is not another empty promise of another politician. It is who I am.”
Olawepo-Hashim holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos; and a Master’s degree in Global Affairs from University of Buckingham in the United Kingdom.
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