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Lawyer, activist and Convener, Pro National Conference -PRONACO and chieftain of the All Progressive Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bisi Adegbuyi has expressed the conviction that, the Presidential candidate of the party, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu has all what it takes to remould Nigeria and build bridges across the country.
The lawyer cum activist stated this at an interactive session with a select group of Editors in Lagos, where he admonished that, “since the three leading candidates represent the three major ethnic groups in the country, any of them that won should consider the formation of a broad based government to wield the country together and avoid it’s collapse,” believing that neither of the three leading presidential candidates for next year’s election can restore unity to the country and move it forward alone.
The three candidates being reffered to here according to him are Bola Tinubu of the ll Progressives Congress (APC), Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP).
Adegbuyi explained that, such a government of broad based arrangement formed on a nonpartisan basis after next year’s election will rally round those he described as owners of Nigeria to renegotiate the country and rebuild it for greatness, believing strongly that, “confederacy is better option than winner takes all attitude in the presidential system.”
The Ogun State born former Post Master General of the country is of the conviction that, the mismanagement of the country’s diversity in the last seven years has called for a broad based government with the backing of elder statesmen to pull the nation from the brink, asserting that, “we must take steps by involving elder statesmen in the country to reinvent it’s wheel and arrive at a consensus of how we want the country to move forward on the basis of equity and natural justice.”
While giving an instance, Adegbuyi a staunch supporter of the presidential candidate of the APC, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu cited the example of the United States where both the Republicans and Democrats came together during its period of crisis like the September 11 bombing of the United States and evolved a solution to tackling terrorism to save the country for all irrespective of their political parties, asserting that, “Tinubu still remains the only person who can build bridges and bring all together for the rebuilding of the country.”
The vocal legal practitioner emphasized the need for statesmen who can ride above partisan interests like we have in the United States and Britain to solve the grossly mismanaged diversity of the country warning that, “leaving the incoming government to whims of the winner cannot resolve the knotty problems which solution requires statesmen who can rise above personal interests.”
His words: “The problem we have today is that those in the forefront are after election are not statesmen who focus on future of the country because statesmen think about the future of the country while politicians think about elections!”
The thickly built lawyer is also of the conviction that former Vice President Atiku Abubakar should have behaved as a statesman and should have allowed the PDP to field an Igbo man as its candidate adding, “if he had done that, he would have earned the salute and respect of Nigerians across board as somebody who wanted to build the state and preserve the unity of the country.”
As for Adegbuyi, the political parties have to close ranks to get Nigeria out of the situation to work around a bi-partisan consideration especially since the three leading candidates represent different ethnic tendencies such that none of them alone has what it takes to pull Nigeria back from the brink, wondering why Nigerians are expecting President Muhammadu Buhari to implement the report of the 2014 National Conference when he has declared that he didn’t belief in the conference?
The concerned PRONACO Convener is however, suggested that the new government should put together a body that will study the 1994 ,2005 Pronaco conference recommendations, the 2006 National Conference conveyed by former President Olusegun Obasanjo and the report of the former President Goodluck Jonathan constitutional conference reports to arrive at a workable document after due consultations among the different stakeholders in the country and produce a constitution which will be a hybrid of the French and American constitutions.