Former President of Nigeria Olusegun Obasanjo said Nigeria needs a leader who is driven by passion and madness to lead the country and set it right.
Obasanjo said he had no other country he could call his own, and felt like he had no country to go to.
President Obasanjo said this when he received a presidential candidate of the PDP at his penthouse residence in the Presidential Library in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital.
A former President of Nigeria also hosted the current Nigerian President; Akpabio, running for office on the platform of All Progressives Congress.
We were told by a source that Hayatu started working at the company around 12:30 and attended a closed-door meeting with Obasanjo for about an hour.
After their brief meeting, former President Obasanjo and Hayatu-Deen spoke to the press briefly, describing it as a friendly visit.
It was also gathered that Akpabio arrived at exactly 2:20 pm while the Hayatu Deen team was exiting the Obasanjo’s residence
Akpabio resigned his appointment as Minister of Niger Delta to allow him to run for the APC presidential ticket.
Former President Obasanjo decried the current state of Nigeria in an event almost as hard for him as it is for Nigerians.
According to him, Nigeria requires a leader who has a passion, innovation, and vision for Nigeria and some who possess adequate knowledge about the challenges confronting the country.
He insisted that Nigeria can overcome its security challenges within two years with the right leader who would be willing to make tough decisions.
Obasanjo called on Nigerians to prepare themselves for the tough road ahead and sacrifice to help put the country back on track.
He said, “It is an agonising situation for you, obviously, and also for me. I want to emphasise the point that the Nigerian situation, as bad as it is, will only be put right by Nigerians at the forefront of our situation. So, Nigerians have to brace themselves up to do what needs to be done to put Nigeria back on the right path.
“And you are right in saying that, wherever you go now, one of the things you hear is that Nigeria is not on the table, but why shouldn’t Nigeria be on the table? What does it cost Nigeria to be on the table?
“I will say four things, of which I was reminded this morning. One is knowledge. If Nigeria is not at the table, maybe the knowledge that we should have of ourselves, of our situation, of our continent, and indeed of the world is not that adequate, if that knowledge is adequate, we will do what is right, when it is right and how it is right.
“The second is vision, what is the vision that we have? And if you have no vision, you may have eyes, but you are blind. And I believe that is part of our situation.
“The third is passion. And when you said, that you are involved in this, with a passion and I was telling some people this morning that, passion means madness, that you are mad about Nigeria, I am and I have no apologies for that because I have no other country I can call my own and I have no other country I can go to and say yes, I have come to live here.
“Passion means being mad about Nigeria and having a touch of insanity, and I look at you (Hayatu-Deen) and say yes, you are mad about Nigeria too.
“Fourth one is innovation. We cannot be doing the same thing that we have done in the past that did not pay us and continue to repeat it and expect any change, we have to move out it, we have to innovate, we have to re-strategise.”
Hayatu-Deen declared that Nigeria is “dissolving and decomposing very fast”, and there needed to be an urgent rescue for the country.
A former managing director of FSB International Bank, Hayatu-Deen, met with the PDP delegates at their party secretariat in Abeokuta and sought their support in the upcoming presidential primaries.
Akpabio said Obasanjo was still “partyless,” a suggestion that Obasanjo is hard to reach, and Akpabio invoked Obasanjo’s age-old wisdom.
He urged Nigerians to judge him by his records of achievement and not based on religion or ethnicity.
The former minister promised to replicate his “uncommon achievements” in Akwa Ibom state as the governor if elected president.
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