The presidential candidate of the All Progressive Congress, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, on Thursday, pledged to employ the best talents to achieve his campaign promises. Tinubu, in a final address, which was also recorded on video, said his tour of the 36 states of the federation had shown that Nigeria has no business with poverty. He said the country is endowed massively adding that he has all it take to change the narratives.
“For the past few months, my running mate, Senator Kashim Shettima and I and other leaders of our great party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) have traversed the length and breadth of our country in the course of our campaigns for the forthcoming presidential, governorship and legislative elections at all levels,” he said
He confessed to being “overwhelmed by the enthusiastic crowds that have trooped out to receive us in all the states we visited.”
https://twitter.com/nporeports/status/1628696239477780481?s=46&t=PVqc99tWSqmyLNfvUOz_1AHe said President Muhammadu Buhari administration has recorded tremendous achievements in terms of infrastructural development in the form of rural and urban roads and expressways, modern railway tracks, as well as improved airport facilities, among others.
He added, “Millions of our poor and vulnerable people have benefitted from the various social intervention programmes of the Buhari administration. The amounts disbursed to these categories of our people are unprecedented in terms of the sheer transfer of resources to the less privileged sections of the population not only in our country but in Africa.
“ It is remarkable and ironical that those who were in power for 16 years earned far higher revenues from petroleum than we did and yet were unable to effectively tackle neither infrastructure nor poverty. They now have the temerity to cast aspersions on the APC administration.”
He said he is aware of the hardships suffered by the people just as he added that some of these could have been mitigated by better conceptualized and articulated policies.
“The truth is that there can be no perfect government in any human community.
“Some of the problems are also of global origin such as the unanticipated COVID-19 pandemic that disrupted economies worldwide or the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war that has disrupted global food and fuel supply chains.
“It is clear to me that there is a lot that the Buhari administration has done that are laudable in the areas of infrastructure, agriculture and poverty alleviation. We must build upon these achievements.
“There are also some sectors where we must adopt new approaches and stress new priorities.”
He said the Office of the President of Nigeria is not one of pleasure.
“Rather, it will demand the highest standard of hard work, discipline, focus, determination and commitment on the part of the next President.
“I pledge solemnly that my Vice-President and I will dedicate ourselves wholeheartedly to working for the greatest good and happiness of the greatest number of Nigerians.
Senator Shettima and I have outstanding records of high performance in public office as Governors of our states. In Lagos, where I served as Governor for 8 remarkable years, I led a team of talented, hardworking, creative, intelligent and purposeful people that recalibrated governance and set new standard in good governance that continues to propel the state to greater growth and development till date. That Lagos State is the 5th largest economy in Africa didn’t happen by chance. It is a product of consistent hardwork and creative leadership.
“We seek to demonstrate on national scale that energy and capacity that transformed our states to bring prosperity to all Nigerians.”