Tinubu Competent To Fix Nigeria, Says Bamidele

Chairman, Senate Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters, Senator Michael Opeyemi Bamidele, at the weekend, called on Nigerians to vote for presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu based on his track record of competence, capacity and vision.

Bamidele, who represents Ekiti Central in the Upper Chamber, under the platform of the APC,said Tinubu possesses scientific knowledge and understanding of the problems confronting the country and has a tested and proven blueprint to solve them.

He said voting on the basis of sentiments should be jettisoned by Nigerians in electing who becomes the next President of Nigeria.

He argued  that based on myriad of challenges confronting the country, a leader with scientific understanding of the problems and who possesses ability to solve them, is what Nigerians need and not a candidate riding the waves of sentiments to get to office.

He said the right presidential candidate is the one who can help fix the economy and protect Nigerians.

Speaking to reporters in Abuja, Bamidele said: " In a nutshell, the person with such track record of turning things around for good is Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu going by the Lagos model.

“He has proven to be problems solver through efficient and effective management of human and capital resources.

“It is not about party, religion, ethnicity or region but about required knowledge, experience, competence and capability which he enormously possess.”

“My own understanding of what Nigeria needs right now is a President who has  the scientific understanding of what's to be done, scientific understanding of what is wrong, the antecedent of having  been able to fix broken communities, broken states, broken situations and who has a scientific understanding of the workings of the economy because a lot of the problems that we have, are traceable to the economy.

"If the economy is buoyant there will be employment. if there is employment, the socio-economic implication of that is crime rate will go down because more able bodied people will be able to survive either as business entrepreneurs or people are engaged by companies or government agencies where they can built a reliable career.

"As much as possible we also need somebody who will have the courage to take decision without minding whose ox is gored and without setting out to either protect any particular religion or tribe or group of people.

"We need Nigerians to come to terms with the reality of the fact that our search should be for someone who can help fix this economy not someone who is coming to protect any particular religion or somebody who is a product of a particular religion but somebody who decisively understands what it takes to turn a nation like ours so that we don't get left behind by the rest of the comity of nations, that's a genuine concern I nurse,” he said.

Bamidele lauded President Muhammadu Buhari for infrastructural development despite financial odds from 2015 till date.

He said things would have been worse if somebody like Buhari had not emerged as President in May 2015.

He said: "If you ask me as a Nigerian, I will say regardless of what we will think about this administration, this is one administration that has been able to do much more in terms of infrastructure development of this country now that there is less money than was done by previous administrations when there was plenty of money.

“When I said plenty of money, if you go by the rate with which we sold our crude oil in the international market and how much money was accruing and how much money we had in our foreign reserve and what our naira was worth, I believe they were good old days for this country.

"We have an administration that came into office just at a point that the international price of the crude oil was coming down and it went from over $100 to as almost below $20.

“If  Nigerians had not had an administration like this, it probably would have been extremely difficult to come out of recessions.

“Not just based on what was happening in Nigeria but within a global context but because of the level of prudence of this administration, it was much easier to come out of recession at different times.”

He however conceded that the present administration has not fully succeeded in mitigating the challenge of insecurity and corruption in the country but said government even though their steps in tackling them are praiseworthy.

"But today, do Nigerians have a reason to dance, I will say no and I say yes, because of  a lot of infrastructural development. But how do you celebrate accomplishment in terms of infrastructural development when there is so much insecurity in the land?

Bamidele added: "When people cannot travel on our roads, even a lot of the trains we had acquired, the rail infrastructure that we had built and all that cannot be put to use by people. So it becomes difficult for you to say you have a course to celebrate.”