A presidential hopeful in the 2023 general elections, Mazi Sam Ohuabunwa, has extended felicitations to Nigerians for making it to the New Year, 2022, despite the myriad challenges.
The Convener of the New Nigeria Group (NNG), in his New Year message, urged Nigerians to brace up for a fresh challenge of birthing a new Nigeria, which would guarantee better life for all the citizens.
The new order, he said, would come about by consciously rejecting recycled and incompetent leaders, whose actions and inactions brought Nigeria to its present sorry state.
Below is the full text of Ohuabunwa’s New Year message:
My dear Countrymen, Happy New Year!
I congratulate all Nigerians on making it alive to this brand New Year 2022.
We are grateful to God Almighty who made it all possible. In such a festive season as this when humanity is united in the celebration of a new beginning and in the hope of exciting fresh possibilities, I am excited to express my goodwill to everyone.
Universally, a New Year brings an opportunity to start the journey of life afresh as individuals and as a nation. A New Year offers 365 new days and 365 new ways to make our dreams come true. After the fireworks that heralded this new dawn fade away, new hopes and realities will be fired up. Just as you and I would naturally resolve to become better human beings and achieve new goals, nations like Nigeria should also have resolutions to birth a new beginning and become a better country.
No doubt, the past year 2021 was traumatic for the world at large, with COVID-19 pandemic and its attendant socio-economic complications still upsetting many nations. For us in Nigeria, the past year was even more traumatic as average Nigerians went through the hell of unprecedented insecurity and dehumanizing poverty. Killings, kidnappings, armed robberies, and all manner of violence became our everyday headline news.
Systemic injustice, regional marginalization and suppression of dissenting voices heated up the polity. High rate of unemployment, ever depreciating value of the Naira and galloping inflation pushed more Nigerians into deeper poverty. Lamentations and hopelessness filled the land. Those who could not cope fled the country to foreign lands, others took to crime, and yet some resorted to committing suicide. In fact, 2021 was a horror of a year for Nigerians, no thanks to a glaring failure of leadership at the centre.
Now, no one can go back in time and change the past. But we can seize this New Year to start making a difference for a new Nigeria towards a better new future. To be sure, 2022 is very significant in the life of our country as it is the precursor to the 2023 election year. If we are ever going to birth a new Nigeria that breaks clean from the decadence and depression of the past 6 years, the journey starts now.
That is why since last year, I, Sam Ohuabunwa, have started a passionate national quest for a New Nigeria that works for all.
With the New Nigeria Group (NNG) that I convened as a movement of like-minded Nigerians across ethnic, regional and religious lines who share the same passion for a New Nigeria with me, I have gone round the entire country in the last one year. Everywhere I went, North, South, East and West, I encountered people yearning for a New Nigeria, not just change for the sake of change. I have met with and spoken to many Nigerians in and outside Nigeria, belonging to the elite and the masses, and all were united in the belief that we need a new breed of leadership to redeem our country from its present state of stagnation and depreciation.
People are rejecting a recycle of the old order of leaders who contributed to our current national mess. They want a new type of leadership with the right content of vision, character, competence and courage to do the right thing for all Nigerians, regardless of tribe, religion, class or gender. This burning desire of our people for genuine change and the urgency of rescue motivated me to consider offering myself to serve as president. And I officially announced late last year in Abuja my aspiration to run for the office of the President on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
As I have said several times before, although I am a Nigerian of the Igbo stock, I am not aspiring to be president because it is the turn of the Igbo. I am offering myself to be elected as president because I have what it takes to change the existing narrative of a disunited, degraded and miserable Nigeria to a New Nigeria that is prosperous, peaceful, progressive, secure and globally competitive.
My plan, if I emerge as the presidential candidate of the PDP, is to mobilize like-minded Nigerians to enthrone a fresh, enlightened, visionary, transformational, selfless and committed leadership in Nigeria that will galvanize the country towards optimizing its human and material resources to build a nation where our collective dreams will come true.
Mobilizing the best brains and hands from all parts of the country, we will work diligently to create a New Nigeria where our people are happy, healthy, fulfilled and feel safe; where our youths get access to quality education and opportunities for self-realization; where our women are empowered to reach any height they aspire to with protected womanhood and maternal health; where our senior citizens retire to comfortable lives with their pensions regularly paid; and where the poor among us are well taken care of and provided inclusive social security nets.
Fellow Compatriots, I believe strongly in the vision of a New Nigeria where Prosperity, Integrity, Justice and Security will form the pillars of our foundation. I enjoin you to join hands and hearts with me on this journey we are embarking on with the enthusiasm of a New Year.
Indeed, I am of one mind with the American industrialist Henry Ford who said: “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success”.
Nigerians, please let us come together, keep together and work together to take our country back for a New Nigeria where hope, happiness, opportunities, unity, peace, development, sense of belonging and security of lives become our new song and reality.
I wish you all a Happy, Prosperous, Peaceful and Progressive New Year.
Thank you very much, and God bless Nigeria.
* Mazi Dr. Sam Ohuabunwa – OFR, MON, NPOM
Convener, New Nigeria Group (NNG).