Charles Ugwu, a presidential aspirant of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has promised to do something about Nigeria’s situation if elected president in 2023.
The largely unknown entrepreneur and attorney, stressed the need for the PDP to field a southerner as a consensus candidate in tomorrow’s primary election.
Ugwu noted that the country is in dire need of reinvention because of the current chaos occasioned by the present leadership, while promising to do something about the situation.
“If you have read my declaration speech, you would have seen what I mentioned as my motivations for entering the race. See, I am pained by what is going and I am sure most Nigerians are. I weep every day at the killings going on across the country; I cringe at the poverty level; I weep at the bruising corruption level in the country, I shudder at the lack of production in the economy, and as a lawyer, I feel bad about the lack of rule of law in our judicial system. I can go on and on and won’t be done in the next 30 minutes,” Enugu entrepreneur cum politician said.
“Point is, the country is in a bad shape and no one who has the capacity to rescue it from the precipice where it is now, as I do think I have, will stand by and not do something about the situation. That is why I want to be president: to rescue the country because I think I can. As a matter of fact, my campaign theme is ‘To Reinvent Nigeria’.”
When asked to explain further on the theme, he said “We need to reinvent Nigeria because it has, for too long, been left in the doldrums where the military, with the active support of the political elite, during and post-military era, left it. We had a thriving democracy (and a progressive economy based on the 1963 Republican Constitution), which the military truncated.
“After 14 years in power in the first instance, the military returned the country to civilian rule in 1979 on the basis of the military-inspired 1979 Constitution. The military was to truncate the civilian rule again in 1983 when the incumbent President, then Major-General Muhammadu Buhari ousted the late former President Shehu shagari from office in a military coup on December 31, 1983.
“Then on May 29, 1999, after another 16 years in power, the military again returned the country to civilian rule on the basis of another military-inspired Constitution, the much-maligned 1999 Constitution.
“It means that in the 29 years of military rule in Nigeria and 23 years of post-military civilian rule, we have run Nigeria on the basis of a military-inspired system and you can see where that has left us: in the doldrums