Nigeria on the brink, needs capable leader to pull it back, says NAMO

• Drums support for Labour Party’s Peter Obi

As Nigerians get set to go to the polls in February 2023 to elect a new president, a nascent pro-development and democracy group has said that the country is in dire need of a unifier, a leader with capacity, strength of character to guide it away from the precipice.

The group, Nigeria Anew Movement (NAMO), has therefore thrown its weight behind Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party, urging Nigerians to resolve to save their country from the abyss by uniting as one people to vote Obi as president come February.

Addressing a press conference in Lagos on Thursday, Umar Sanda Adamu, NAMO’s national president, described Peter Obi as a leader who is untainted by endemic corruption; a clear thinker, a pragmatist and a bridge between the North and South, between the young and old generation.

Adamu argued that Obi is the most suitable among the four leading candidates in next year’s presidential race and therefore the best man for the job, describing him as a breath of fresh air in Nigeria’s polluted political environment.

The preference for Obi, Adamu said, is predicated on experience, track record, prudence in governance, intellectual depth, ample commitment to the common good, mental and physical energy, people-centred leadership and pan-Nigeria vision. On most counts, he disclosed that Obi came out tops, hence the group adjudged him the preferred candidate for Nigeria’s top job.

Omife I. Omife, a co-convener of the group, stated that Nigeria is in a dire situation that warrants all hands to be on deck in the quest to salvage the tottering nation buffeted on all sides by a combination of insecurity, bad economy, ethnic tension occasioned by herdsmen attack and cattle rustling.

Omife, a past president of Association of Past Presidents of Local Government Areas in Anambra State, canvassed for like-minded people to reject ethnic politics and embrace a clean break from the present faulty system by electing Obi as president.

Earlier in a solidarity speech, the Summit of Nigerian Think-Tank, a UK-based group of Nigerian professionals, stated that Nigeria cannot be allowed to continue to drift.

The statement, signed by Ignatius Ozoilo, chairman of the group, called on Nigerians of all creed, social class and ethnic origin to unite behind the Peter Obi candidacy as the  country  cannot afford to continue with the politics of ethnicity and divide and rule.

Ozoilo harped on the need for a leader with useful experience and the determination to change the present faulty system.

He re-echoed NAMO’s conviction that Obi is the best candidate for the job and noted that in times of profound national challenges such as Nigeria’s, nations need steady hands to steer them out of crisis and Peter Obi, he contended, is that steady hand Nigeria needs now.