2019: Buhari Remains The Best Option For Nigeria Right Now – Ambode

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Temidayo Akinsuyi, Lagos

Governor Akinwunmi Ambode has been in
the fore-front campaigning for the Buhari/Osinbajo ticket in the 2019
presidential election. He was cornered last week by journalists during
the peace meeting held with aggrieved aspirants of the All Progressives
Congress (APC) in Marina, where he spoke on his involvement in the
campaign to re-elect President Muhammadu Buhari. TEMIDAYO AKINSUYI
brings the excerpts:

The 2019 Presidential election is fast
approaching and with due respect to other candidates, it looks like a
two-horse race between the APC candidate and incumbent President,
Muhammadu Buhari and the PDP Candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. You have
been in the forefront of campaigning for Buhari and why he deserves a
second term. Can you tell us why you think Buhari should be given
another term as President?

Just to be very clear, as an average
Nigerian, not necessarily as a Governor now, I will pitch my tent with,
endorse and vote President Muhammadu Buhari in this forthcoming
Presidential elections on the basis that having crosschecked all the
presidential candidates, I believe at this auspicious time in this
country, the right person that can actually take us to the next level
and the next trajectory of the prosperity and progress of Nigeria is
President Muhammadu Buhari and I am very clear about what I am saying.

Apart
from the fact that he has been President in the last three and half
years, he has also been Head of State in the military era. But again, if
you cross check all the other candidates, most especially the candidate
of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), when you put both of them on a
weigh balance, there is one that has integrity more than the other,
there is one that is more passionate about Nigeria and Nigerians, most
especially the poor than the other. So, if the question comes on why we
are voting for Buhari, it is on the basis of integrity, on the basis of
somebody who is passionate of which those two values are values that I
also cherish and practice as the Governor of Lagos State. It is very
clear that we are just like like-minds and I will obviously engage
Nigerians that those two values are the values that can bring prosperity
to Nigeria. You need a lot of character; somebody that has character is
likely to create an enabling environment that can make this country to
progress. But beyond character and integrity, you can see that in the
last three and half years, we have made fundamental preparation to push
this economy to its positive trajectory and that’s what President
Muhammadu Buhari has been trying to do and Nigerians don’t understand.

If
you have cumulative 16 years of disruptive infrastructural tendencies,
there is no way one single tenure can allow a corrective measure of the
infrastructural deficit, you have to create that environment to allow
you to do that. Let me give one simple example. Today, we are having the
reconstruction of the Apapa/Oshodi Expressway being taken on by
President Muhammadu Buhari. This particular expressway which is more or
less the nerve centre to the economy of this country has never been
touched in the last 40 years. Of this 40 years, 16 years of PDP was
inclusive. Within three and half years, we have been very bold and very
adamant that you need to rehabilitate the Apapa axis for you to be able
to push the economy of Nigeria forward because anything that happens
around the Lagos economy has a positive trajectory to the nation’s
economy as a whole. So, it’s very clear, if you see a government that
decides that and says that, look, even in these years of abandonment,
decades of abandonment, they want to take on this whole issue, knowing
well that in another two to three years, it would be delivered, so they
need to monitor it, giving it back to those who abandoned it is not a
good course to run. When you look at the reconstruction of the Niger
Bridge, it’s been on for the last four decades also, these are
fundamental infrastructure. So it gives you more or less a very clear
mind what this government of Buhari will do if he is taking on
fundamental things that would push the economy forward. All we need is
to support him and also make a whole lot of economic technocrats
available to rally round him and take this country to the next level.

So,
if you move away from infrastructure and you are looking at investment
in agriculture, a very clear example is LAKE Rice, it was just to prove a
point that we can do local production of our own rice and project our
own revenue of which the FG and of which President Buhari has been
critically supportive of. So, we just need additional one or two years
to allow us to do that and then importation of rice would become a thing
of the past.

When you look at things that have to do with
inclusive governance, you know all these TraderMoni and allowing SMEs to
have access to interest free loans is what you mean by inclusive
governance. PDP never did that for 16 years, so why will you now say the
PDP candidate is coming to do inclusive governance? There are therefore
clear examples why we must all rally round President Muhammadu Buhari
and give him that second term for him to be able to consolidate on all
the things that are very dear to us; the things that would grow the GDP
of Nigeria, the things that would enable the poor to have access and
create more jobs and also allow the economy to move forward and in terms
of what we have in fiscal and monetary rates and policy, it is
important that those are the things that the President just needs from
Nigerians to be able to push this country forward and that’s why anytime
any day, the candidature of President Muhammadu Buhari is the best
option for Nigeria right now.

President Buhari in 2015 campaigned
on the basis of improving the security situation in Nigeria especially
in the North East. How well do you feel he has fared on this front
especially with the recent unpalatable reports of attacks and skirmishes
in some parts of the country?

Security is the number one
achievement of this present government of President Buhari. When he came
into power in 2015, the security situation in the North East was not
what it is now. Look, people might want to be politically funny and
trying to create stories from nothing, but the truth is that what we had
in 2015 and the relative peace we are experiencing in 2018 in the North
East are totally two different things. This 2015 security crisis was
handed over by the PDP to the Buhari administration. Against all odd the
country had regained lost territories and the enemies have been pushed
out. There is relative peace in the North East and the truth is that
Lagos, of which I govern, is the most secured city in Africa right now.
Is it possible for me to do it alone? Of course it’s through the support
and assistance of President Muhammadu Buhari. So, if there is anybody
that is ever going to talk about security, the peace that we are
enjoying and the protection of lives and property in Lagos is a
reflection of the Federal Government’s desire to keep Lagos safe. So I
am going to urge all Nigerians to continue to stick with the All
Progressives Congress and the government of President Muhammadu Buhari,
because in terms of security, within the context of what we met and what
we have now, Nigeria has been peaceful and in order to sustain that,
you need to keep that government in power and that’s the more reason why
we should vote for Buhari in this coming election.

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