2023: Ignore Sentiments, Vote Competence – Senator Bamidele tells Nigerians 

By Adekunle Adesuji

Chairman, of the Southern Senators Forum, Senator Michael  Opeyemi Bamidele, has asked  Nigerians to vote for a candidate with scientific knowledge and understanding of the problems at hand with the required way out.

Senator  Bamidele who made this known in  Abuja at an interactive session with Journalists said sentiments of whatever form, should be jettisoned by Nigerians in electing who becomes the next president of the country.

He stated that based on myriad challenges or problems confronting the country, a leader with a scientific understanding of the problems and required solutions to them, is what is needed and not one banking on any form of sentiments to get to the office.

“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 build a reliable career.

“As much as possible we also need somebody who will have the courage to take a decision without minding whose ox is goad , 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.

He however commended President Muhammadu Buhari for squeezing water out of stone as far as infrastructure development is concerned between 2015 and now.

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

“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, 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 dollars to almost below 20 dollars.

” 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 the prudence of this administration, it was much easier to come out of recession at a different time “, he said.

He though admitted that the Buhari administration has not fully succeeded in taming the problems of insecurity and corruption in the country but said government actions in those directions, are also commendable

“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?

“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”, he added.