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Terrorists who attacked train passengers mistook them for party delegates from Abuja with dollars – Nwajiuba

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Terrorists who attacked train passengers mistook them for party delegates from Abuja with dollars – Nwajiuba
Former Minister of State Education, Mr Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba

…Wants Osinbajo, Tinubu, other South-west presidential aspirants to drop ambition

Former Minister of State Education and All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential aspirant, Mr. Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, has adduced reason why terrorists may have attacked the Abuja-Kaduna train, killing and abducting some of the passengers.

RELIABLESOURCENG.COM reports that Nwajiuba, who spoke exclusively to ThisDay, said the bandits may have mistaken the train passengers for political party delegates who had gone to Abuja to share money and were on their way back to Kaduna.

He was answering a question that the reason he had not been going round the country to meet with his party delegates in the various states of the federation as other presidential aspirants was because he is President Muhammadu Buhari’s preferred candidate.

Responding, he said: “My job is how to organise the country. We have five delegates from each ward, including the chairman and the secretary. One of the remaining three delegates must be a woman. We were already a factor in every polling unit before the election started. That is how we think in modern times.

“If you like buy two aircraft and be crisscrossing the country, once you leave your destination, other people will go and dine there. That is not how politics is done. We don’t need to do dollar bazaar on the day of the presidential convention.

“We don’t want the bandits to come and attack us, like they did the last time, when they attacked the train going to Kaduna, because the bandits thought they were delegates, who had come to Abuja to collect dollars. If we insist on bringing everybody here and cause a Naira rain in Abuja, how will the poor people survive?”

Nwajiuba, who resigned his appointment as Minister of State Education, ahead of presidential order for all political appointees with electoral ambition to resign, described the trio of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and Senator Ibikunle Amosun – all contenders for the APC ticket – as unsuitable for Nigeria’s “current work plan”.

READ: BREAKING: Buhari gives ministers, political appointees five days to resign

He described the three aspirants as nice people but insisted that it made no sense for anyone from the South-west to be pitching for the presidency of the country now, after former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s eight years in office and Osinbajo about to serve out another eight years as vice president.

On the question of zoning, Nwajiuba explained that it became difficult the moment everyone was allowed to purchase nomination forms.

“Nobody had zoned the positions before people started purchasing the forms. So, you cannot zone after they had purchased the forms. It is from the people, who are now available that you will look at what each aspirant is bringing to the table and how best would they solve Nigeria’s problems,” he said.

Defending the decision by some northerners to join the presidential race, the former minister said: “There are three people from the north, who purchased the APC presidential forms – President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan; Governor of Kogi State, Yahaya Bello; and Governor of Jigawa State, Abubakar Mohammed Badaru. They all have the right credentials to be Nigeria’s president.

“They are men of foresight. They are from the North-east, North-central, and North-west. They are possibly in the contest to make a statement that if we are talking about national justice and fairness, we should only be thinking of the South-east. This is because it is the only zone in the south that has not produced president since 1999.

“However, for them to be seeing about eight people from the South-west suddenly laying claims to the same argument they had against the north makes it look very silly. This is because you cannot be accusing the north of something you are also perpetrating.

“Olusegun Obasanjo had been president for eight years; Osinbajo has been vice president since 2015. Why should the South-west say the north should cede power to the south and that they must be the beneficiary? How does that make any sense of any type?

“Yet they are asking the young patriots in the north to cede power to them. I am sure if the South-west pulls out of the presidential race, aspirants from the north would also rest their ambitions and allow the South-east to produce Buhari’s successor in 2023.”

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