Those Campaigning With 2023 Are Agents Of Retrogression – Olawepo-Hashim

Those campaigning with 2023 are agents of retrogression – Olawepo-Hashim

PRESIDENTIAL
Candidate of the People’s Trust, PT, Mr. Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim, has
decried the raging campaign of calumny trailing campaigns for the 2019
elections and wondered why many politicians cannot make their campaigns
issue-based.

The candidate expressed shock and dismay at the
increasing ethnicisation of the February presidential race by
high-ranking state officials and warned that the trend is an unwitting
attempt at somalilisation of Nigerian politics.

Speaking in
Lagos while hosting a brainstorming session on finding national
consensus over the state of the nation, Olawepo-Hashim slammed those in
high offices who are dangling the 2023 presidential ticket as a
political carrot, describing them as “agents of ethnic balkanisation and
political retrogression.”

Alerting the nation to the emerging
deterioration of standard and norms in high offices, he said it is
alarming that the vice-president of the nation was part of the
ethnicisation campaign. While wooing voters in the South-West,
Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, penultimate week, said the zone would get
the presidency in 2023, if it joined forces to get President Muhammadu
Buhari re-elected.

He wondered why the high office of
vice-president should be dragged in the mud of tribal bigotry. “That
reprehensible statement promising 2023 presidency to the South-West
should never have emanated from the Office of the Vice-President. That
office transcends tribal thinking. The presidency is and should be a
rallying point for all Nigerians irrespective of tribe or religion,”
Olawepo-Hashim said.

He pointed out that tribal campaign hinged
on 2023 as a promissory note confirmed the shallowness of political
discourse as issue-based campaigns have been jettisoned by the two
mainstream political parties, warning that “Nigerians have grown beyond
this bigotry through inter-marriage, electoral endorsement and business
union.’’ His words: “As early as the First Republic, the Tiv people
elected a Kanuri man as their representative to the Northern House of
Assembly.

In 1993, the late M.K.O Abiola beat Bashir Tofa in
Kano. Today, so disappointedly, some top leaders instead of building on
our achievements in the area of national unity are busy pushing to split
and reopen old animosity and rancour among our people.’’ Wondering why
politics and campaign cannot be about higher ideals of national unity
and prosperity, the PT candidate affirmed that the presidency of Nigeria
should be about merit, competence and passion to deliver on good
governance, not the drumming of ethnic card or the promotion of tribal
advantage.

“The Presidency must be about how further to unite
the country not how to divide it more. It must be about how to bring
progress, not how to foster under-development. It is not about ethnicity
or religion but what you have to offer the people and the state. “Let
those seeking re-election campaign on their records.

Using state
funds to curry votes through tradermoni and other contraptions is very
cheap and ridiculous. Let us focus on the realities of under-development
threatening our collective existence. “For me and our party, we preach a
pan-Nigerian agenda as a modern state where citizenship is for
individuals, not based on ethnicity or religion. I will be a President
of all Nigerians regardless of their political, religious or tribal
inclinations,“ Olawepo-Hashim added.

Source:- Vanguardngr