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BEING A TEXT OF SPEECH DELIVERED BY THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE OF THE PEOPLES DEMOCRATIC PARTY DURING THE INAUGURATION OF THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN COUNCIL ON WEDNESDAY, 28 SEPTEMBER 2022
PROTOCOLS
It is my distinct honour and pleasure to welcome you all to today’s inauguration. We are all gathered here today for the inauguration of the Presidential Campaign Council set up by our great party, the Peoples Democratic Party, to diligently prosecute, and win, the general elections slated for February and March, 2023. Even though this body is nominally styled “Presidential Campaign Council”, in reality, it is a General Elections Council. Because, of what use or benefit is a victory of the presidential candidate alone, without a sweeping victory of all our other candidates at all of the elections taking place next year.
Majority of the people gathered here today are, like me, seasoned politicians with nothing but pure politics flowing through our veins. What is the number one job of a politician like you and I? It is to navigate the murky waters of politics, and to campaign for and win elections. So, the inauguration of a Presidential Campaign Council, as the one we are all gathered here to witness today, should be a normal occurrence in the normal life of normal politicians.
But today is not an ordinary day! And the inauguration today of our Presidential Campaign Council is not an ordinary event! Far from it!
In May 2015, Our Great Party, the Peoples Democratic Party, in an orderly, peaceful and rancour free manner, handed over the reins of government at the centre to the opposition party, the APC, having lost the presidential elections a few months earlier. Four years later, in 2019, and in spite of the drift, economic desolation, challenges of insecurity and massive dislocations to the lives of our citizens witnessed under the APC government in those years, and notwithstanding that our great party had put before the Nigerian people, a demonstrably better plan for recovery and development of our nation, our party was, once again, schemed out in the elections held that year in the most devious manner.
It is a testament to the patriotism, dedication to constitutionalism and law and order, and the unshakable belief in the rule of law and the supremacy of the courts in our land, that our great party, the PDP, chose and pursued redress in the one and only way laid down by law – through the courts. Of course, you all know how that ended so, there is no need to bore you with details.
Since the loss at the polls of 2019 till now, and under the watch of the current APC government, our dear country has witnessed a frightening descent into anarchy. Our nation is currently in the throes of a multidimensional crisis encompassing insecurity, economic meltdown, disunity and mutual mistrust, to mention a few.
To start with, the current government has failed at the very essence of what makes a government: the security of lives and property of its citizens. Our security challenges are legion, and I do not need to bore you by rehashing them here.
Our economy is in shambles, growth has stagnated, and our people are facing massive existential challenges daily. Hunger is the norm today in our country.
Our nation is in disarray. The fabric of unity that binds our country is, today, being torn apart by mutual distrust, ethnic and sectarian strife and we are now more disunited than we have ever been in our history, including even when we fought a civil war.
Our educational system is comatose. Nothing more underscores this than the twin embarrassing facts of the number of children that are currently out of school, and the length of time that University students have been kept out of their classrooms this year, as a result of the ASUU strike.
Our system of government is broken. Our current system is unfair, unwieldy, skewed towards favouring the federal government at the expense of the other federating units, and has in itself, become a willing tool for underdevelopment. This kind of system of g
