The Presidential Candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar has said that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) deceived Nigerians in 2015 by promising to restructure the country which they didn’t to date.
Atiku stated this while having an interaction with the leadership of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) on Tuesday in Abuja. He said the proposal CAN presented to him is what he believes in and stood by even when former President Olusegun Obasanjo who was his principal and his constituency in Adamawa disagreed with him.
He said he wrote a book on his thoughts which conforms with the proposal CAN presented to him, and he still stands by those objectives in the book. He, however, said that there is a difference between the government that ran the country from 1999 to 2015 and the government running the country from 2015 to date.
“You must realise that there is a difference between the government that ran this country from 1999 to 2015 and the government that has been running this country from 2015 till date.
“One example I want to give you, they said they need restructuring, did they restructure? So they told Nigerians what they wanted to hear and did a different thing when they got the opportunity. PDP is not like that.
“I stand before you here not to campaign but to tell you the honest truth, what you have presented to us is what I have always believed in, and if I have the opportunity, I swear to God, I will do it.
“The fundamental front lines that we have seen in the last 7 to 8 years only occurred because you wanted to change in 2015, and you elected the change you are seeing and experiencing now”, he said.
The former Vice President further stated that “the CAN document is totally in conformity with thoughts in a book which I published even when I was a vice President and I had a fundamental disagreement with my President on that book and the policies it advocates on that book.
“Not only did my President and I have problems, but I also had problems with my own constituency where I come from, but because it is something that I believed in, I still stand by those objectives in that book.
He said to tackle insecurity, he will increase the size of the police force, and train and equip them.
“We cannot have state police without having a constitutional amendment, so we will go into constitution amendment where we will have different levels of police. These are our plans to tackle the security challenges facing the country.
“For sure we need a judicial amendment, first of all, there are poor wages for Judges and very poor working conditions. Again, the judiciary has levels, the federal judiciary, and state, but we will attempt as much as possible to have a judicial reform where we will improve the dispensation of justice and also the welfare of Judges.
“I am a supporter of the removal of clause of the definition of indigenship in our constitution, once you reside in any part of the country, and you pay your taxes, you should be entitled to indigenship”, he noted.
On his part, the Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Mr Peter Obi while interacting with the leadership of CAN, said that all the 18 presidential candidates will make the same promise. He asked Nigerians to check the sincerity of their promises and support those they can trust.
He said his target is to move Nigeria from consumption to production, secure and unite the country.
Obi said that Nigeria has met the qualifications to be characterised as a failed state because the country is no longer in control of its territory and economy.
“All presidential candidates will tell you the same story, everybody’s story will be as sweet as the other ones. What you are going to do is to check the sincerity and the truth and the one you can trust.
“It is now who among these 18 presidential candidates can you trust because there is no promise that we are going to make that has not been made in the past, that promise has always been there.
“What I want to do is to move the country from consumption to production, it is not a productive country, our priority is to secure and unite the country, it is the number one thing you need to do.
“Nigeria has hit the two most critical things that qualify a country to a failed state, number one, when you are no longer in control of your territory, we are no longer in control of our territory, number two, is when you are no longer in control of your economy, nobody can tell you today how much they are going to sell a bag of rice tomorrow. No country can function like that.
“You saw the last report where we have 133 million people living in poverty, no country can have such a number of people living in poverty and won’t face the crisis we are facing”, Obi stated.
He said that the figures of poor people in the country increased as a result of the cumulative effect of leadership failure over the years.
“I assure you that I am committed to the charter, the only thing there is how do we implement it, the will to implement it, and I can tell you that we need to restructure, but even as bad as the present constitution is, there is a lot of guarantees in it and there is a lot of things that you can implement that can make it work, it is not what is stopping us from production, that is not the problem of production, over the years, we have had incompetent leadership”, he added.
The CAN President, Archbishop Daniel Okoh in his remarks, stated that CAN is very careful not to be partisan and it still maintains that position.
“All the positions we have taken, have not changed any of them, if we want to change any position, we will let the Nigerian public know.
“When people read insinuations on social media, I will advice that people will come to CAN to verify and to be sure that what you see out there is truly the position of the Christian Association of Nigeria”, he reiterated.
