A 38-year-old youth development advocate, Khadijah Okunnu-Lamidi, has become the first female to declare interest in running for the office of the president in the 2023 general elections. Okunnu-Lamidi, on Monday, declared her interest in replacing President Muhammadu Buhari at the helm of Nigeria’s affairs.
Okunnu-Lamidi is the daughter of Lateef Femi Okunnu (SAN), a former Federal Commissioner of Works and Housing, who is the President of Isale-Eko Descendants Union and an elder statesman while her mother, Arinola Omololu, is a businesswoman of Ago-Owu pedigree.
Speaking at a media conference held at Freedom Park in Lagos, Okunnu-Lamidi, an active social impact practitioner who has carved a niche for herself in the Nigerian media and advertising space, disclosed that her motivation in vying for the presidency stems from her desire to make Nigeria work for its diverse populace.
While noting that 2023 is a defining moment for the country, Okunnu-Lamidi restated her confidence in playing a leading role in writing a new history and restoring hope for Nigeria.
‘‘I do not come to this lightly or out of vanity or frivolity. I come to this with humility and with responsibility and with the burden of a generation to whom the future of Nigeria belongs,” she said.
The Founder & CEO of Slice Media Solutions, who identified some of the problems facing the country to include hunger, poverty, fear, insecurity, unemployment, reiterated that the well-known problems fall on all Nigerians regardless of their religion, tribe, and where they live.
“It is all Nigerians who suffer the effects in one way or another; the blacksmith in Sokoto, the farmer in Ogun state, the trader in Lagos, the fisherman in Bayelsa, the miner in Jos and the sculptor in Anambra. Rich and poor, young and old are all affected by the high and ever-rising cost of living, high youth unemployment, poor healthcare, environmental degradation and even the deplorable state of the roads which we travel each day. All these things make us less safe and less happy,” she added.
Okunnu-Lamidi, who hinted that she is already in discussion with some political parties in the country, added that she is not a greenhorn as she was born, raised and mentored in a political-conscious family.
