Kayode Fayemi, the governor of Ekiti State, publicly proclaimed his presidential ambition on the platform of the All Progressives Congress on Wednesday.
In Abuja, the Chairman of the Nigeria Governors Forum enumerated some of the concerns he plans to address if he is elected President of the country in 2023.
Fayemi explains why she wants to be president.
The governor of Ekiti State indicated that he wants to be president in order to assure peace and a bright future for Nigeria’s children.
Fayemi also stated that he has sufficient public service experience to lead Nigeria’s affairs.
Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State, Dr Chris Ngige, Minister of Labour and Productivity; Mr Chukwuemeka Nwajuba, Minister of State for Education; Governor David Umuahi of Ebonyi State; Godswill Akpabio, Minister of Niger Delta Affairs; and former Edo State Governor Adams Oshiomhole are among the others.
“Beyond my early forays into the public sphere as a student leader, all of my subsequent engagements in national affairs as a scholar, civil society voice and institution-builder, community and political organiser with an unapologetic pan-Nigerian and pan-African outlook, tireless advocate for human rights and democratic governance, two-term governor.
“So, here is my driving testament and confession: I am a patriot born in these climes during the first decade of our country’s freedom, and I boldly claim to be a full-blooded Nigerian child.” Many of my generation was socialized into the notions of a united and virile nation, and I was no exception. I’ve seen some heartwarming instances of nation- and state-building in my lifetime that would make any citizen everywhere immensely pleased.
“However, there have been some truly hard days in our nation’s history that have tested our collective fortitude and required significant political savvy on the part of our leaders over the years.”
I’ve taken a key lesson from the country’s mix of high and low points: we always succeed in overcoming and thriving through adversity when and where we are charitable to one another and allow our shared humanity, innate spirit of solidarity, hard work, perseverance, and underlying patriotism to prevail.
“The hope I offer with my candidacy is based on a shared vision of a nation that is more confidently and uncompromisingly at one with itself, serving as home for all of us regardless of ethnicity, class, gender, age, disability, region, or religion, on which we can all agree and for which we collectively strive.”
The assurances
Fayemi stated that during the campaign, he will uphold the greatest standards of decorum, decency, and respect that Nigerians demand of their leaders.
He promised to fulfill his promises to the delight of all Nigerians and the admiration of the rest of the globe.
He made the following promises:
– To give full effect to this, concrete action plans will be implemented in priority areas, allowing for a revamping of the Nigerian state’s credibility, the promotion and fulfillment of a strengthened social contract, and the resuscitation of the national identity.
- Programmatically, as the All Progressives Congress’s standard bearer, I will be in charge of implementing a comprehensive and coordinated response to the various security issues that we face. To that aim, we will retool our armed forces, intelligence agencies, and border guards in concert with a policing system overhaul and the gradual implementation of bold universal social programs that will enable us to decisively combat poverty and improve human capital and security.
– Broad socioeconomic measures to strengthen our power to combat insecurity must be implemented concurrently with investments in the state’s deterrence capacity through its military forces, security agencies, and policing authority.
We must better design and interface economic policies with broad social objectives and goals of political inclusivity toward a well-defined outcome, namely, sustained peace, stability, and progress of our country, just as we must better design and interface economic policies with broad social objectives and goals of political inclusivity towards a well-defined outcome, namely, sustained peace, stability, and progress of our country.
– Let there be no doubt: my agenda for Nigeria includes attention to questions of productivity, diversification, domestic value addition, investments in and incentives for research, development, and innovation, and the expansion of domestic revenue mobilization, among others, in order for the economy to serve broader social and political purposes that enhance human and state security, stem poverty, and promote national prosperity.
- Work on modernizing and expanding our infrastructure is already underway, and one of my top priorities would be to speed it up, both through public investments and collaborations with the private sector, while also ensuring that we enforce accountability and obtain much better value for money.
– Similarly, a major rescue and investment program for the education sector, the health system, the civil service, and local government will be launched in order to re-orient each of them for the task of overall national development, progress, and prosperity.
– I understand that we cannot ensure our prosperity unless our agricultural sector is capable of delivering self-sufficiency in critical food markets, feeding our efforts at agro-allied industrialisation, and thus meaningfully enabling the transformation of the unemployed into gainful employment, reinvigorating rural areas, fostering the coordinated expansion of commodity exchanges, and boosting the flow of foreign exchange into the economy.
- Without paying attention to the whole planning system of government, no vision of national wealth, no matter how perfect, and no program of national change, no matter how complete, can provide the required results. To offer new, forward-looking, research- and data-driven methods to development management, we must build on recent gains in recovering our national planning system and statistical capabilities.
- A holistic approach to decentralisation would be embraced and entrenched as part of this commitment, bringing government and its services closer to the people. Our decentralisation policy will also contribute to the goals of a stronger, more united, and stable Nigeria, which will benefit not only our domestic prospects but also West Africa, the rest of the African continent, and a difficult international multilateral system.
