Moghalu says there will be a ballot revolution in Nigeria in 2023
Insists IPOB’s secessionist campaign is “an expedition into sentimentalism that will solve nothing.”
By TheNiche
Professor Kingsley Moghalu, presidential candidate of the Young Progressives Party (YPP) in the 2019 elections, has said that the 2023 elections will be different from what Nigerians are used to.
Moghalu, former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), said “there is going to be a ballot box revolution in Nigeria in 2023.”
Moghalu, who is aspiring to run for the presidency again in 2023, said young Nigerians will make the difference in next year’s election.
“The young people are not thinking the way the older people are thinking. They don’t like the APC and the PDP because they have not shown them any promise for their future. And that is where we are going to draw a lot of our support from.”
The former diplomat, who spoke in an exclusive interview with TheNiche in continuation of our special presidential aspirants’ interview series, said PDP and APC are two sides of the same coin.
“In 2023, you will not solve the problem by removing Olisemeka and replacing him with Chukwuemeka because they are the same thing. The APC and the PDP are the same and actually, I recommended that they should be merged and become one party.”
Moghalu said President Muhammadu Buhari epitomizes gross incompetence and failure.
While admitting that the President may have done his best in office, he insists, however, that “Buhari’s best is not just not good enough, his best does not even begin to scratch the surface of the problem Nigeria is in.”
“So, I think all he has succeeded in doing is opening the eyes of Nigerians to some degree, not fully yet because you find some people supporting certain kinds of candidacies and you wonder whether we have learnt any lessons.
“But Buhari has demonstrated to Nigerians that it takes a lot more to be a competent, effective and unifying president of a country like Nigeria.
“Many people before Buhari became president had high expectations of him not because he was a fantastic intellectual, not because he had a great track record in the past, but simply because he was effectively packaged and sold to Nigerians as something that clearly he is not. He was packaged as somebody who, because he was a General in the Nigerian Army, would tackle the security problem. It got worse under him.
“He was sold as someone who was incorruptible, but corruption is rising astronomically under his leadership and he has failed to stop it.
“He is somebody who has governed Nigeria from a predominantly ethnocentric point of view. And that is why the country seems to be breaking apart because even the very notion of Nigerianness is currently being contested.
“Many people don’t want to associate themselves with Nigeria any more. They would rather associate themselves, first with their ethnicity before they will even associate with Nigeria and in some cases they consider the Nigerian identity an imposition.
“This is a very, very advanced failure of leadership.”
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But Moghalu says Ndigbo are better off in Nigeria and frowns at the campaign of the Nnamdi Kanu-led Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) for a sovereign Igbo nation.
“The campaign is very, very unhelpful. It is just an expedition into sentimentalism and I don’t think it will solve anything,” he said.
“Yes, there are issues with equity and justice that Igbos have faced in Nigeria. I understand the basis for the agitation but I don’t think the agitation is being executed in the right manner and I think it has created a lot of distrust as well because many people do not know that most Igbos are committed to Nigeria and prefer to remain part of Nigeria.
“The propaganda of IPOB is creating the impression and some people who are biased against Igbos are using that propaganda as an excuse to create a false impression against Igbos at large. So, I don’t agree with IPOB. I don’t believe that Igbos should secede from Nigeria. We should fight peacefully and democratically.”
Moghalu says he wants to be President of Nigeria because he has the vision of what it takes to make Nigeria great.
“I want to be president of Nigeria because I have a vision for our country that I have not yet seen being executed by any of the political leaderships that have failed.
“I want to be President of Nigeria because I bring a certain level of competence track record and capacity to address Nigeria’s problems.
“I am an economic thinker. I have written books on economic transformation with ideas about how economies like that of Nigeria and other African countries can actually create prosperity.
“So, I have done it at the practical level, I have done it at the conceptual level and I have been a professor of international business and economic policy at one of the world’s most prestigious institutions of international affairs – the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts,” Moghalu, who is also a lawyer, said.
- Please visit www.thenicheng.com on Monday, January 31, 2023 to read the full interview: “Kingsley Moghalu: Why I want to be President of Nigeria.” The interview will be live at 5.25 am. It is another promise of quality journalism kept.
- It is compelling. Only in TheNiche. We ask the hard questions. We get the most interesting answers.