A presidential aspirant on the platform of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Dr Ibrahim Bello Dauda, has said his decision to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari is in a bid to address the anomalies and problems threatening the foundation of the country’s democracy and nationhood.
Dauda, while speaking in Abuja on Tuesday at a roundtable ahead of the party’s presidential primary election, said his experience in politics and a private sector pursuit had properly placed him to see through the complexity of Nigeria’s many problems and be able to offer simple and effective solutions.
According to him, sentiment and emotion should no longer be allowed to dictate important and sensitive national decisions.
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Olonilua“I am joining the race because I feel being in the system for a long time relatively; I have a proper understanding of the nature of the problems of Nigeria, the intricacies of governance and the dynamics of our civil system, the establishment, the bureaucracy. With that, I feel I have a lot to offer in terms of provision of solutions to the myriad of problems we have today,” Dauda stated.
He continued, “I will provide leadership based on fairness, equity, integrity, honesty and the fear of God. Most of what the governments, present and previous, have concentrated on is more on the reactive. What we will do is going to be preventive. To do that, there are steps that would be taken to secure the borders because arms and ammunition are brought into Nigeria through the borders and we have porous borders, which are not easy to police using armed personnel.
“So, we would adopt a hybrid digital security system, utilizing various sources of intelligence, including satellite capabilities and unmanned aerial vehicles. The objective is to be preventive and cut off the supply of arms and destroy the logistics and structures of these criminal elements.”
On zoning in the ruling party, he said zoning, as adopted by various dominant political parties in the country, had not doused tensions as intended but further exacerbated the situation.
“I am an advocate of zoning, but I have always asked the question, how has zoning fared? If zoning has really worked, then we won’t be having the agitations and insecurity that we are having today,” Dauda revealed.
He noted that in the constitution of the APC and Nigeria, zoning was not written anywhere.
“It is only a gentleman’s agreement. The party can only diplomatically negotiate it, but it cannot impose it,” he stated.
