The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Yakubu Dogara has declared that the 2019 elections would be a referendum on the state of security and hunger in Nigeria.
According to a statement by his media aide Turaki Hassan, Dogara who was speaking in Gombe, at the North East zonal campaign and rally of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), challenged Nigerians to do a introspection and decide if they have made progress in the last three and half years or have witnessed a decline in their living standards on a general basis.
While lamenting the current state of situations in the country, Dogara remarked that, “So 2019 elections is about insecurity, whether we can be secured. Then look at your own lives, even if nobody loves or likes you, advise yourself, hold a consultation with yourself, sit down and argue with yourself, ask yourself what progress you’ve made in the last three and a half years.
“Don’t even ask any other person, in case that person may give you a biased opinion about yourself, but you know yourself very well, just sit down and if you want assistance, sit down close to a mirror so that you can see yourself.
“Compare yourself the way you look now and the way you looked some three years ago and then you’ll know, and then decide for yourself whether you want to continue looking like this, that is if it doesn’t get worse in the next four more years. By the time you’ve finished having that conversation with yourself, make a decision”.
“Today in Nigeria thirteen million of our children are out of school, one million, three hundred thousand of those children are from my home state of Bauchi.
“If we continue like this, the numbers are bound to increase, and the crisis we will face in the future will be more than this Boko Haram crisis that we are witnessing. This is because by refusing to give free and compulsory education to our children, we are raising an army for insurgency that will come and consume us as a people.
“So the vote in 2019 is not about anything, but about you, about you and about you. Do not make it about any other thing, but about what progress do you want to make? What kind of country do you want to raise your children in? What kind of country do you want to live in? What kind of education do you want to be given to your children?
“All these are what we have in the 2019 ballot. And we trust as educated and enlightened opinionated people, that you’ll make the right choices.”