National Wire About Nigerians, Nigerian Business and Other Stories
Former Chairman of the Nigerian Economic Summit and Presidential aspirant under the umbrella of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Mazi Sam Iheanyichukwu Ohuabunwa has identified four demons troubling Nigeria.
Ohuabunwa who addressed members of the Network of African Christian Journalists (NACJOURN) in Lagos said, the demons are what an average Nigerian confronts daily which are bringing down the nation and causing hardships.
“There are four demons disturbing Nigeria. They are the demon of poverty, corruption, injustice and insecurity. They are related and they take their order from one leader which is the major one, poverty,” he enumerated.
“The captain of industry continued that, “The major demon which is poverty is influencing insecurity, corruption is affecting insecurity, you can see the relationships. If you can get poverty right, then you have solved majority of the problem.
“When everyone is going to work and they return in the evening and happy that they have had a productive day, would they have time to go and work against somebody?
“If they have work to do and the work is not enough like they say their take home cannot take them home, then the problem still persists. So every adult should have something productive to do,” he said.
On social security, Ohuabunwa said if he becomes the President, the country would be a caring nation because there are people living on the edge.
“This will be a caring nation. The Bible says the poor will always be among you, there are those on the fringes of the economy and they will all be catered for,” he said.
Talking about the hardship in the land, the alumnus of the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, said, the people are not empowered because of the sustained inflation which would be addressed if Nigerians vote him into power.
“Even among those who are working, if you have sustained devaluation of the Naira, you have sustained inflation, their income will be nothing. If inflation goes above five percent, there is automatic problem. We would be adjusting salary because the economy grows by the velocity of economic interaction,” he explained.
When asked if it was God leading him to contest the PDP ticket, Ohuabunwa, who fought at the Nigerian civil war as a soldier on the Biafran side, said, he is not seeing the giants because he might just be the David said,
“When God puts something in your heart as a burden, He is actually telling you to go and solve a problem. Any problem you wake up and think about, sleep and think about every time is what God wants you to solve,” he explained.
The aspirant who said he was highly influenced by the late Dr. Gamaliel Onasode also told the journalists that, “Since 1986 I have been thinking about how can we make Nigeria to be like the rest of the world. How can you make Nigeria to be like USA, UK, Singapore, Malaysia etc?” He asked.
He said the way to make Nigeria to be like those countries is through the right leadership and that is why he has declared to contest.
On how Nigeria is being run and whether the present government is doing enough to salvage the current situation, Ohuabunwa, who has a National Honour of Order of the Federal Republic (OFR) said, effort is not enough but result speaks louder.
“My school of thought and my philosophy is that efforts is nothing, result is everything. I can claim I’m brilliant but how can I claim that if you have not seen my result? Have you eaten soup before? When there is no salt, what do you normally say? It has no salt, they don’t say there is no enough salt but you say there is no salt in it. I can swear the person has put salt but it’s not enough.
“So this government I believe they are doing things but when they attack a railway station on Monday, Tuesday they attack it, Wednesday they attacked it, how can you claim they are doing something? Railway line is how many kilometres? You can even put troops one kilometer each, you can put soldiers one side put police one side if you want to protect it physically. You don’t even need that, you use technology.
“With technology, you can see the rail line and monitor it 24 hours. You will see everything, when you see people doing something, you can tell the train to stop,” he said.
The former President of the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, Sam Ohuabunwa is the founder and former Chief Executive Officer of Neimeth Pharmaceutical now vying for the presidential ticket of the opposition PDP in order to lead Nigeria.
