Presidential aspirant of Grassroots Development Party of Nigeria (GDPN) in the 2019 election, Dr. Davidson Isibor Akhimien yesterday advocated for institutional overhaul to address the governance and leadership challenges facing Nigeria.
He also said the current war against corruption by the Federal Government is not holistic, saying corruption should be attacked from foundation level.
Speaking with journalists at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos on his arrival into the country, he said corruption still pervades the entire fabric of the nation.
He said the GDPN as a political party with presence in all the 36 states of the federation and the FCT would focus on addressing the challenges facing an average citizen with particular emphasis on the youths.
According to him, stemming rural-urban migration would form a major thrust of the GDPN policy thrust.
He noted that strengthening the institutions of government is critical to achieving good governance and bringing about better life for the citizenry.
He said, “Our leaders don’t even understand what governance is. We are going to be looking at our institutions, see how we can deepen our institutions so that our institutions will become more powerful than personalities because politicians come and go, institutions remain and they control the state.
“We are going to be looking at governance, ensuring that governance is done in a proper way and all the institutions serve their purposes without undue interference.
“We are going to be looking at development because any politics without development is one-sided politics. Politics is all about development. The motto of our party is “Peace, Industry and Progress” but the ideology of our party is reducing the rural-urban migration.”
Akhimien, who is a renowned entrepreneur, lamented that Nigerian politics from 1999 till date has been largely driven by self-interest rather than national interest.
“We have observed with dismay the way our politicians have been carrying on to the detriment of the mass majority of people whom they are supposed to serve”, he stressed.
He added, “We have observed how it has all been about self-interest rather than the general interest. We have observed with dismay again that in Nigeria if I were to represent it arithmetically, the Highest Common Factor in Nigeria politics has been that of corruption because at every level you will find that this thing called corruption continues to pervade the entire system. And the fight against corruption even by the present government is not holistic enough as far as we are concerned as Grassroots Development Party of Nigeria.
“Corruption goes beyond what we have in the political space now where politicians and leaders are just carting away public funds; corruption is endemic in our system and it is this system that shoots up these leaders, that bring them up.
“The leaders come from the system. So we have to attack corruption from the foundation because both the leadership and the followership are corrupt. That is why at the level of GDPN, we are bringing to the table a whole new direction, a whole new approach in the way we are going to fight corruption in this country.”
Also important, he noted, is value reorientation and entrenchment of righteousness in the system, saying, “Nigerians must be patriotic again by the time they see what their government is doing for them”.
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