Abuja – A former Nigeria Head of State, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, has declared that Nigeria needs a younger and vibrant leadership to make it a greater place.
Abdulsalami pledged to support the ambition of Barrister Adewole Adebayo, the presidential aspirant on the platform of Mega Party Movement for the 2023 general election.
General Abubakar, who spoke when the presidential hopeful led his team of his supporters on a visit on him in Minna, the Niger State capital on Saturday, said Nigeria was on right path with someone in the caliber of Chief Adebayo joining the presidential race.
He emphasized that Nigeria with a population of over 200 million certainly is a great country and the leadership will go a long way to make it a greater place for humanity.
“Thank you Adebayo for finding me fit to come and tell me of your ambition. Indeed Nigeria needs the younger generation to take over from us the older generation
“I am so happy not only you other young people are showing interest in taking over the leadership of the nation. Like you rightly said the world is going digital and I believe the younger generation are more exposed internationally in ICT more than the older generation.
“I am happy that you are thinking of moving the country forward and I believe with your ideologies and your youthful and vibrant ambition I think Nigeria is on the right part and wish Nigeria will be great.
“Nigeria with a population of over 200 million certainly is a great country and the leadership will go a long way to make it a greater place. Thank you for finding me fit to come and visit me to tell me of you ambition.
“You can count on our support always trying to do the right thing,” he said.
He thanked Me Solomon Dalung , a former Minister for bringing his friend to visit him.”
In his remarks, Dalung, the former Minister of Sports and Youth Development, hailed the former Head of State for deploying his energy towards making peace around the country
Describing Abdulsalami as father of modern democracy, Dalung said, “We have come because as an elder who have served this country, and still serving, who has invested and is still investing in the unity and stability of this great country of ours
“As one of your children I can volunteer for free how you think and feel Nigeria should be. I also know as a fact that consistently you have always been very prayerful for the growth and the development of this country.
“We always refer to you as the father of this democracy because you made history at a time when so many people disbelieved your sincerity of purpose, you handed over.
“We are here this morning with my friend and a delegation first to thank you for the wonderful things you are doing for this country. Very soon we shall be inviting you when we have quarrel with our wives.
“I sometimes wonder how you make it, anywhere there is trouble the next person you will is Abdulsalami. You have gone almost everywhere donating peace to this country. We pray God that your efforts would not be in vain.
“We are also here to inform you that we have a young man who has seen the visionary dream of governing this country and from the community I came from,Taro, any young man who has a dream will first discuss with the elders.
“As one of the elders of this country we deemed it necessary to visit you and share this his dream with you so he can seek for advice for guidance and if we have your mind we will have the blessings too.”
In his speech earlier, the Presidential aspirant of the Mega Party Movement, Barrister Adewale Adebayo lamented that the country’s democratic foundation is now under threats.
Adebayo said, “We are greetful to you for many reasons and my friend has said it. But that you that we saw on May 1999 handing over power and collecting your service plaque, you have always been there.
“You are one of our greatest leaders, you are to us what Abraham Lincoln is to the Americans.
“Because Lincoln founded America it wasn’t George Washington, he reformed the character of the country after to he civil war and you after many years of military wilderness showed on to us that one you are an officer and gentleman and you kept your words which was not easy to do and you did it.
“But it wasn’t that day that you became who you are, you have always been a good citizen. You paid grievous sacrifices in the past when there were opportunities that you could be anything in the country to go abroad, or you stay here and become a medical Doctor, lawyer, you chose a profession where you had to give your life to the country.
“At that time you never knew you could be head of State. You thought you could be eliminated in the war front but you have your life to the country.
‘If every youth lives there lives as you had led that time some will be head of State, some will not be but everyone would be a patriot and the country is built by patriots not by people in government and the calamity that we suffer in the country is not the misbehavior of people in Government.
“It is the effect of the disbelieve that it has created on the minds of the people and the generational inheritance of that doubt of the feeling that things can be that good but things can be good.
“The reason why when we have problems we come back to you it is not because we want to overwork you. It is because in mathematics you start with the basic formula when you are confused and you are the basic primary formula for our democracy.
“We say if you want to show that tomorrow would be good you refer to a past that was good and looking back you give us that frame of reference.
“The reason why I have come out is essentially because the country itself needs to be saved now and people like you risked your life for it literally, shed blood, and you lost many of your compatriots.
“Even the country hasn’t reach its full potential. You have given us a country as a base to work with. Even that little foundation is now under threats from all kinds of threats of which you are very familiar with the causes and the solutions.
“So 2023 is not to us in this generation an ordinary year just like you did for us in 1998, it is a year in which there are two paths, the path that leads to the continuation of this road that we know eminently does not augur well for the country or a new path that the people who are going to inherit the future start building the future now and the responsibility that you carried when you were at our age we need to carry them now.
‘We need to show five things to assure you that you legacy lives on. We need to have a template for you to show that Nigerians does before any other decision and that the unity and continuity of the federal republic of Nigeria is more paramount to us than any other consideration.
“Two, that we know that, it is not a country where we want to be great individually but we want the country to be great.
‘I will rather be an ordinary man from a great country than a great man from a useless country. I
“t is that importance, there is nothing else that we as young people can achieve than we have produced everything that can be produced but we need to give the glory to the country which means, that the labours of our heroes past should not just be a unsong.
“That labour should be a continum because the journey of the heroes of the past started it is not yet finished and if we just talk about heroism without talking about who is going to be the new hero because we need to build a new country.
“The fourth point is that the world has become more global and you did a wonderful thing in 1999 when you have us civil rule, you made us to join the comity of nations because we as a country was seen as a criminal country as a bandit country because we were under military rule that is how you brought to the comity of nations, everything that followed was because you put us on an international plane. (Vanguard/vitalnews)
