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Nigerians will go to the polls on Saturday, 25 February to elect the successor to President Muhammadu Buhari who is finishing his second and last term in office. A Nigerian diaspora group has thrown its weight behind Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, who is running on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), and is asking diaspora Nigerians to call their families and friends at home and implore them to vote for the candidate of the ruling party.
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Forward Nigeria, a coalition of Southwest diaspora groups and individuals, has endorsed Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu for Saturday’s presidential election.
After a 4-hour global virtual conference on Saturday, Forward Nigeria agreed that Tinubu is the realistic choice before Nigerians, describing him as “a man of audacious vision, whose legacy of pioneering public policy feats” makes him the best choice to take the country forward.
The diaspora group described Tinubu as an “astute political administrator who is development-minded and merit-driven”.
In a press release, issued by its Vienna, Austria-based Co-ordinator, Engineer Yemi Ogundele, who is also the chairman of Ogun State Diaspora, Forward Nigeria appealed to Nigerians to bear the hardship caused by the ongoing scarcity of currency notes with fortitude and maintain peace in order not to play into the hands of those planning to truncate democratic governance in Nigeria.
Forward Nigeria said Tinubu is a politician who can unite Nigerians behind a development agenda and a common vision as the main obstacle to Nigerian progress is lack of unity.
“With his reputation as a political bridge builder, Tinubu is the only politician today who has the capability to build a pan-national support for a long-overdue decisive national development vision,” the statement read.
“And given his record of achievements in Lagos within the framework of the 50-year plan his government initiated, we can confidently hope that his presidency will bring real progress to Nigeria after so many years of stagnation.”
The group also described Tinubu as a man of immense fortitude who has demonstrated an uncommon capacity to reconcile with old political foes, which makes him the best choice to heal the divisions in the country.
The group called on Nigerians to troop out en masse on Saturday to cast their vote for Tinubu who has the “imagination, experience and ideas” to propel Nigeria forward and bring about a turnaround in the nation’s fortune.
Forward Nigeria condemned other presidential candidates who are supporting the orchestrated shortage of naira currency notes despite the immense suffering it’s causing the people. “Such leaders if allowed to gain power will not and cannot improve the situation of Nigerians,” the group said. “For people seeking to lead Nigerians to openly back a policy which is causing Nigerians so much suffering, shows that if elected they will not govern the nation in the interest of the people,” the statement said.
The group called on President Buhari to jettison the advice of fifth columnists in his administration and abide with the order of the nation’s highest court to bring the needless and avoidable suffering of the people on the currency notes to an end.
Forward Nigeria expressed its active support for the ongoing “Project 20-23 for Jagaban”, which appeals to members of the Southwest Diaspora to call at least 20 persons in their families and circles of friends in Nigeria to encourage them to vote for Asiwaju Tinubu on Saturday.
