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Mazi Sam Ohuabunwa
By Samuel Torlumun
Breezing through handshakes and pleasantries, he walked briskly to the podium. His usual trademark smiles were overshadowed by, perhaps, the urgency to drive home his mission of reinventing a new Nigeria.
Mazi Sam Ohuabunwa, a top presidential aspirant in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the convener of New Nigeria Group (NNG) in his series of consultations across the country, recently met with the Caucus of PDP lawmakers in Abuja, an occasion he used to sell his candidacy to the federal lawmakers.
For a man who has come to a point in his life to accept the reality, where leadership burden in his fatherland must be lifted away, Ohuabunwa’s mission to salvage Nigeria is taken with all seriousness. His goal is clear, and time is now.
Just like other stakeholders within the PDP family that he has been consulting, Ohuabunwa told the federal lawmakers that Nigeria’s major challenge is leadership. According to him, he has what it takes to offer leadership to the nation.
The former Chairman of the Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG) said a good leader must be enlightened, competent, visionary, courageous, and of good character. And these qualities, he said, he possesses in good measure. With this in place, he is optimistic that New Nigeria will be born. A Nigeria that will be globally competitive, and will be globally respected.
To take Nigeria out of the doldrum to a first world nation, it requires a recreation of Nigeria. And Ohuabunwa refers to the reinvention, as The New Nigeria. According to the advocacy expert, core values of The New Nigeria will be, knowledge, industrial development, integrity, patriotism, justice, freedom and godliness.
For decades, Nigeria has been a consuming nation with little or nothing to export. What will the New Nigeria bring to the table? It is all about hard work and smart creativity to increase productivity, which will raise the country’s gross National Productivity.
Another core value of the reinvented Nigeria is integrity. Ohuabunwa’s political philosophy states; “We believe that our country has chronically underperformed and much of this has been caused by leadership that lacked integrity, reveling in corruption, nepotism and criminality and effectively making Nigeria endemically corrupt. The New Nigeria we seek, must be birthed by crop of Nigerians who are principled with high moral and spiritual strength to stand up for what is right and righteous.”
To activate a high sense of nationalism, Ohuabunwa’s New Nigeria would encourage resurgence of spirit of patriotism among Nigerian citizens, by building a Nigeria that works for all, in fairness and justice.
There will also be freedom and liberty. Freedom of expression is sacrosanct where courageous Nigerians can stand to their convictions.
Ohuabunwa offers The New Nigeria that will lift away the ‘siege mentality’ among Nigerians so that every Nigerian, big or small, poor or rich, minority or majority, Christian or Muslim will pursue his/her dreams to the zenith. It is a promise to respect fundamental rights and dignity of all Nigerian citizens.
Then godliness. It is widely believed that Nigerians worship God, but are far from being godly. To enthrone godliness attitudes to Nigerians, the Ohuabunwa’s New Nigeria will translate the zeal of religious worship into a god-like practice of true love, compassion, honesty, accountability and generally, a hate for evil.
But the need to combat immediate challenges facing Nigeria is also nagging. Although the advocacy expert said his administration would tackle holistically, poverty, corruption, injustice and insecurity in Nigeria, based on his policy pillars. He posited that insecurity in Nigeria must be tackled in the light of its causative factors like, job creation, investment into intelligence, sanitizing the justice system, among others.
Fundamental to Ohuabunwa’s policy thrust is job creation. On this, he explained it will enable the young people not to be vulnerable for recruitment by miscreants. “We will declare emergency against joblessness and poverty. And lastly, we will ensure that justice reigns in our country.”
On how to tackle corruption that has eaten deep into Nigerians, he argued that most Nigerians can’t distinguish between corruption and lack of it, and that the only corruption Nigerians see is the one others commit not the one they are committing.
Accordingly, Ohuabunwa identifies poverty as the major cause of corruption, and added that his administration will deal holistically with it as every adult must have a means of livelihood. Transformative education will not be left out.
He said, “We are going to change orientation of our education sector. Where people who go to school to research to memorize to come up with first class, can’t solve any single problem.
In our new education reorientation, Nigerians will solve problems and learn to create wealth. Whatever your course of study for A level students, in the final year, you will develop a business plan, not a project.
“Government is going to establish Small Business Development Authority, (SBDA) in all the LGs. So, after NYSC, they will look into the business plan and determine the investment opportunities or marketing potentials so that they can link you up with financial institutions for a debt.”
The Pharmacist is believed to have had what it takes to drive the vision for New Nigeria, come 2023. He is a successful entrepreneur and investor, who was the former chairman of Manufacturer Association of Nigeria, (MAN), President, Nigeria Employers Consultative Association, (NECA), President, Nigerian-American Chamber of Commerce, (NACC), as well as Chairman, Nigerian Economic Summit Group, (NESG) and Chairman of Organized Private Sector, (OPS). He was actively involved in the fashioning of Vision 2010 and 2020 documents.
Apart from his private sector’s excellence, he has actively involved in the public sector administration both at the state and federal levels, being chairman governing councils of state’s institutions as well as board members of federal establishments. Some of these include; Nigeria Extractive Transparency Initiative (NEITI), National Health Insurance Scheme, (NHIS), National Manpower Board, (NMB), National Institute for Social and Economic Research, (NISER), Board of Pharmacists Council of Nigeria, (PCN).
