A presidential aspirant on the platform of the African Democratic Congress, ADC, Alhaji Mohammed Hayatudeen, has said the ongoing conversation around zoning is distracting Nigerians from the real and urgent challenges facing the survival of the nation.
On the Political Paradigm programme on Channels Television, he made a passionate case for re-focusing the national discourse on what he described as the issues that really matter – insecurity, economic collapse and the desperate need for job creation.
“Last week, 416 people were kidnapped and threatened with execution. What has that to do with zoning? What does that have to do with zoning, the tens of thousands of our fellow citizens who have died in the last three years?
“The mother who can’t afford to buy food at the market, the father who can’t send his child to school. What does any of that have to do with zoning?” He asked.
Hayatudeen said that what Nigerians need are leaders who are not defined by geography, but by character, competence and empathy.
No matter where you’re from. What is important is that you have the capacity, the skill, the vision and the deep empathy to deliver for every single Nigerian,” he said.
“Nigeria’s security crisis cannot be solved in isolation,” Hayatudeen was emphatic.
He linked decades of bad economic policy to the rising tide of violence across the country.
“Nothing occurs in a vacuum. “There has to be an underlying cause,” he said, adding: “The economy has been under-managed and has underperformed for at least 20 years. “So, if we say that the population has grown, then that means that the number of people in poverty has grown five or six times, and today, about 110 million Nigerians are in poverty.
He rubbished claims that the present wave of insecurity is election-driven, asserting that the data paints a different picture.
“I’m a numbers guy. I have compared the information with think tanks abroad and within Nigeria. “The evidence does not support that narrative,” he said.
Hayatudeen, who was also a presidential aspirant on the platform of PDP, was clear on his decision to fly the ADC flag: the party’s constitution, manifesto and leadership are in tandem with his vision for Nigeria.
“Their leaders are forthright, tenacious and experienced. They have the will to mobilize everything that is needed to fight and win this election at every level,” he said.
He said the ADC’s attention to the cost of living crisis, insecurity, job creation and poverty eradication were the priorities of ordinary Nigerians and his own.
Hayatudeen also expressed concerns on what he called, the intentional suffocating of Nigeria’s political space.
“What the government has done is to muzzle the political space, through surrogates and the instruments of state, making it impossible for Nigerians to exercise genuine freedom of choice,” he warned.
