Date: 2022-02-23

Former Minister of Youths and Sports Development, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, has stated that in view of the various challenges facing the country, the 2023 elections in the country should provide another opportunity to hit the reset button and great task of nation-building.

Abdullahi, therefore, said: "This is the time for every citizen who has something to contribute to come forward."

Speaking in Ilorin yesterday during the

presentation of his letter of interest to the state chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) to contest for the Kwara Central senatorial district in the 2023 election, Abdullahi said: "No matter what may have happened in the past, 2023 provides us yet another opportunity to hit the reset button and rededicate ourselves to the great task of nation-building.

"We cannot afford to get it wrong. The task at hand is serious and it is urgent. "We can therefore no longer afford the luxury of incompetence, empty showmanship, ruinous partisanship, or suicidal indifference.

"This is the time for every citizen, who has something to contribute, to come forward. Our country desperately calls out to us."

Abdullahi, who was a former state commissioner for education, added: "Our dear country Nigeria is at the moment faced with numerous challenges, some of them unprecedented in nature and in high scale.

"Indeed, we can only point at few other moments in our history, if any, that are as terrifying as perplexing and as uncertain as now. For majority of the people, surviving one day onto another day feels like a major achievement

"Today, insecurity has its iron knees firmly planted on the throat of our country. Banditry and sundry criminal acts beleaguer our country at a scale never witnessed before; and Nigerians are losing their lives in hundreds across our country every day.

"National domestic and foreign debts are at a record high and the economy is in crisis. All indices of human development show that Nigeria has not only stagnated in the last couple of years, we have indeed regressed.

"Nigeria ranks 157 out of 189 countries in the 2018 Human Development Index with 87 million Nigerians living in extreme poverty-unable to feed themselves and their families or access basic medical care."

Abdullahi opined that: "It is in the light of this, therefore, that I have decided to offer myself for service.

"And it is with great honour that I hereby humbly notify you of my intention to contest for the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to represent Kwara Central senatorial district in the 2023 on the platform of our great party, the PDP.

"In almost two decades of public service, both at the state and the national levels, I have demonstrated a great sense of responsibility, and I have demonstrated courage and competence.

"I have also demonstrated loyalty and integrity. These are the qualifications of leadership that our country needs at this critical time."

Responding, the state Chairman of the PDP, Rt. Hon. Babatunde Mohammed, said the former minister possessed outstanding qualities to be elected a senator in the next elections.

He said: "The loyalty and commitment of the former minister to the PDP and our leader, Dr. Bukola Saraki, are not in doubt."

Mohammed, who lamented the ineptitude outings of the present administration in the country, said: "If a person like Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi is elected into the Senate, he will use his exposures to make laws that would bring new lease of life to the doorsteps of the rural populace."