A presidential aspirant of the Alliance for New Nigeria (ANN), Mr. Gbenga
Olawepo-Hashim said weekend that the 2019 presidential election would be a
three-party race, declaring that the ANN would offer a credible
alternative platform to Nigerians who desire real change and national
revival.
Olawepo-Hashim said at the national convention of the ANN in Abuja that
the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC and the major opposition Peoples
Democratic Party, PDP, had both failed to justify the peoples’ confidence
in them.
He said as flawed and compromised platforms, the APC and the PDP would not
sail through in 2019, as they would suffer outright rejection by Nigerians
who have become disillusioned by their failure to provide leadership
required to transform Nigeria.
According to him, “the national economy has been grossly mismanaged by the
APC government. We are almost in a disaster on the economy. When
President Goodluck Jonathan left, unemployment rate was 6.4 percent, but
under President Muhammadu Buhari, it is now 600 percent increase.”
Olawepo-Hashim, a successful international businessman and chairman of
Oilworld Limited, said both the APC and the PDP were in disarray and up
for a crushing defeat in the 2019 general election.
He stated, in particular, that President Buhari must be changed and the
people must be deliberate in investing their mandate in another leadership
on the basis of capacity and vision and not on the basis of “anybody in
2019 but Buhari”.
“The mistake of 2015 must not be repeated when some people said anybody
but President Goodluck Jonathan would be president. So, it must not just
be anybody but President Buhari in 2019, because anybody can as well be
worse than Buhari,” he declared.
Olawepo-Hashim, who was first elected into the position of deputy national
publicity secretary of the PDP in 1999, called on Nigerians to rest
assured that the ANN would offer a credible and solid platform for
national revival, and declared that he would contest for the position of
president on the ANN platform in the 2019 election.
The former student union leader said he had a divine command to offer
himself on the platform of a credible third party on which he intended to
collaborate with Nigerians, most especially the young and the not-too-old
of both sexes, in order to take Nigeria to higher heights.
He said the ANN was not a part of the coalition of political parties
through which many questionable politicians had sneaked into politics,
stressing that the decision was informed by the need to be able to
convince Nigerians that “it is not politics for the sake of it and neither
is it business as usual.”
According to him, “It is a serious and national movement of renewal. I
will be a rallying point for the national rebirth. There are values that
must guide our leaders. We are people of integrity. Mindless looting is
not who we are. We are decent people and our leaders should be able to
champion our positive values.
“There are leaders who talk down on the country, that Nigeria is corrupt
and they think they can increase their political value by debasing and
demeaning the country and talking down on their people. That is not the
business of leadership. The business of leadership is to inspire change
with the greatest value and propel them on the path of national
reconstruction.”
He canvassed “a change in the context in which politics is being played in
the country so that we can have a sane conversation on the way forward.”