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‘Nigeria’s president must command global respect’
By Nsikan Ikpe
Following his emergence as the presidential candidate of the Young Progressive Party, YPP, former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Professor Kingsley Moghalu has stated that Nigeria needs a different kind of leader.
Moghalu who spoke shortly after he had emerged as the YPP presidential candidate in a primaries exercise said that such a leader should be one with international stature and who should be able to command and attract global attention and respect for the nation.
The former CBN Deputy Governor, who was also a former staffer at the United Nations, UN, emerged the candidate of the the newly registered party through a delegates election that was held at the party’s first National Convention and Presidential Primaries on Saturday in Abuja.
To emerge as the flagbearer, Moghalu scored 243 votes out of 253 accredited delegates. His only opponent, Mr Donald Igwegbu, stepped down from the contest before the vote took place.
Hear Moghalu:
“More than ever before, Nigeria needs to be driven by a vision, informed by a worldview that determines everything else.
“Up till about 40 years ago, China was viewed as a basket case; overpopulated, unproductive and ruined economically by policies of the decades prior to that.
“Today, they snap their fingers and nearly every single African Head of state shows up in China with their hands out, eager for Chinese largesse. That’s what a country driven by a worldview can achieve.
“In accepting the presidential ticket of this great party, I stand here before you to say that Nigeria is fully capable of achieving greatness at home and abroad in our lifetimes.
“But this cannot happen with the normal way of doing things, the so-called Nigerian way.”
“It is a choice between remaining a mere fractious assortment of ethnicities and religious on one hand and building a real nation on the other.
“It is a choice between freedom and slavery under our recycled and corrupt politicians; between poverty and prosperity for our masses of the poor, and the unemployed, and between stability and continuing instability of the Nigeria state.”
Moghalu had only recently pulled out of the newbreed coalition of presidential aspirants, PACT, after a controversial vote had produced Mr Fela Durotoye as ‘consensus candidate’ of the group.
YPP presidential candidate, Prof. Kingsley Moghalu
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