Muslim-Muslim ticket: Nigerians shouldn’t be bothered by religious sentiment – Opeyemi Bamidele

Senator representing Ekiti Central in the National Assembly, Michael Opeyemi Bamidele, has urged critics of the All Progressives Congress’s (APC) same-faith ticket to shun sentiments, and vote for a candidate who can fix the economy.

Senator Bamidele, in an interview with journalists weekend in Abuja, said the country’s myriads of challenges required someone with scientific knowledge and understanding of the problems and required solutions to address them.

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“My own understanding of what Nigeria needs right now is a president who has the scientific understanding of what is to be done, scientific understanding of what is wrong, the antecedent of having been able to fix broken communities, broken states, broken situations and who has a scientific understanding of the workings of the economy because a lot of the problems that we have are traceable to the economy.

“As much as possible, we also need somebody who will have the courage to take decision without minding whose ox is gored, and without setting out to either protect any particular religion or tribe or group of people.

“We need Nigerians to come to terms with the reality of the fact that our search should be for someone who can help fix this economy not someone who is coming to protect any particular religion or somebody who is a product of a particular religion but somebody who decisively understands what it takes to turn a nation like ours so that we don’t get left behind by the rest of the comity of nations, that’s a genuine concern I nurse,” he said.

He, however, commended President Muhammadu Buhari for infrastructural development despite scarce resources.

He said things would have been worse off if Nigerians had not had the Buhari administration.

“It was much easier for the country to come out of recession at different times because of the level of prudence of this administration,” he said.

The lawmaker said though the Buhari administration has not fully succeeded in taming the problems of insecurity and corruption but government actions in those directions are commendable.

“Today, do Nigerians have a reason to dance, I will say no and yes because of a lot of infrastructural development. But how do you celebrate accomplishment in terms of infrastructural development when there is so much insecurity in the land?

“When people cannot travel on our roads, even a lot of the trains we had acquired, the rail infrastructure that we had built and all that cannot be put to use by people. So it becomes difficult for you to say you have a course to celebrate,” he added.