Your Excellency, the chairman of our great party, Alhaji Adamu Muazu, senior members of our party here on this great occasion, we have spent so much time here so I will not bore you with protocols.
Today, I am going to address only a segment of the Nigerian population. I am going to address the people who are voting for the first time, those of you who will attain 18 years this year.
That means I am addressing the young people. I do not want to address old people like me, because we are spent already and I will crave your indulgence Nigerian youths, those of you who are here, and those of you watching us at home, listen to what I am saying.
I am going to address political gatherings in 37 cities and I am going to dwell on three key things. I am focusing on the young people.
Whatever I say, when you go back, call your aunts or call your uncles, your father or your mother, or your cousin, that is at least 60 years old and confirm and ask them what you heard that the Presidential candidate of PDP mentioned in any of the rallies because 2015 elections is about the young people: either you vote and continue to be relevant in Nigeria’s political history or you vote for you to be irrelevant.
And I will repeat it, those of you who are voting for the first time, your decision to vote could mean you vote for a Nigerian youth to be important, to be relevant in this country or be a Nigerian person to be treated as a nonsense person and I believe all of you want to be relevant.
Of course you have seen…we have just introduced our governorship candidates and you see how many of them that is of your age bracket. Which other party will give that kind of opportunity?
I am going to dwell on three things because those who say they want to take over power from PDP have been telling a lot of lies. They have hired people from all over the world and those of you in the social media carry all forms of lies, painting all kinds of colour and giving me all kinds of face that I cannot defend.
If you listen to us in the 37 places we will address these issues, you will now know where to cast your votes. I will address you in all the places on three issues.
The first is the issue of insecurity. I am also going to address whether this administration is fighting or encouraging corruption. I am going to address the issue of weak government and unfocused government that has no plans. Yours is to listen and compare with everything that has been done before in this country and take a decision.
I will not keep you here for too long because we still have the opportunity… I am going to raise just very few issues today and tomorrow I will continue in Enugu and then on and on and on.
First let me tell you about the voter’s card. First when we came in here we saw some placards, some of you complaining that we are yet to get a permanent voters card. Only yesterday, I directed that every Nigerian (of voting age) must vote. INEC must make sure and government will not allow a situation where some (eligible) Nigerians will not vote; we will not allow it. All Nigerians must vote and I mean it.
I told you that I am addressing those of you who are voting for the first time. Those of you in the age bracket of 20 to 24, if you go back, ask your uncles, before 2011 no Nigerian complained that he had no voters card. People voted themselves into office. We came and said every Nigeria vote must count and since then, the voter’s card has become relevant.
This is the party that is giving political strength to all Nigerians. Already you have been told from intelligence reports that some people are already cloning cards so that your voter’s card will no longer be relevant. Is that the kind of people you want to take over government? (Crowd shouts NO…!)
They want to take us to the old days when nobody saw voter’s cards but results were announced. They want to take us to the old days when ballot papers would be in South Africa and results would be announced. Are you going back to the old days? (Crowd shouts NO…!)
Nigeria must move forward, Nigeria is for the youths. Nigeria is not for old people like us. The young generation must redefine this country. We must take this country to where we want it to be. Nobody can push us backwards. The past is past. They have led us backward and backward.
In fact when we were young, we were told that at Independence, Nigeria, Brazil, Malaysia, Indonesia and even India were all at the same level. That was what we were told when I was in the secondary school and the university. Now all those countries have left us behind and now some people want to take us backward. Do you want to go backwards? (Crowd shouts NO…!) Nigerian youths do you want to go backwards… (Crowd shouts NO…!)
Young Nigerians were doing things fantastically well, they were acting films and these very people were snubbing them, they were playing music and these very people were abusing them. But we are encouraging them and the world has accepted them. Do you want to move forward? (Crowd shouts YES…!) Do you want to go backward? (Crowd shouts NO…!)
I told you I was going to address things and I will be very brief. They talk about insecurity. That they will fight insecurity. And you will ask are our armed forces weak? Are the Nigerians in the Armed Forces weak? If we have problems what is the cause—equipment. And somebody who wakes up and tells young people of 23 years old that he wants to fight insecurity, ask him when he was the head of government did he buy one rifle for a Nigerian soldier. (Crowd shouts NO!…)
These people did not buy anything for the Nigerian soldiers. They refused to equip them. No attack helicopter, nothing. Ask them what they did with the defence budget for the whole time they were in office. No country equips armed forces overnight. What they use is quite expensive and they are built over the years. Even if you spend 10 billion dollars today, you cannot equip the army, navy and air force.
The capacity is built overtime. They refused to build the capacity. They instigated crisis and now they are telling us they will fight insurgency. Ask them and they will answer. I will elaborate more as we progress to other places.
The next is that they say government is corrupt; or we are not fighting corruption. Only yesterday, I addressed the anti-corruption agencies. I said look people are deceiving young Nigerians. You must tell Nigerians what you are doing. We have arrested more people within this period. Gotten more convictions within this period but everyday they tell us lies.
At this point, let me apologize to some Nigerian civil servants who did not receive their salaries in December early enough and I will tell you what happened. I apologize to those families that suffered because we believe that for you to fight corruption; you must take measures, establish and strengthen institutions. You just don’t wake up, enter the street, arrest one person and lock up and show on television and say that you are fighting corruption.
If they had succeeded in fighting corruption, corruption would not have been with us here today. If they had set up structures and especially in today’s modern science using ICT to manage resources, we would not have been talking about corruption today. What happened in December was that IPPIS, software for processing salaries, -- sometimes people steal through salaries- and some federal government agencies including some ministries tried to divert funds to pay some allowances. The system is scientific, it is not a human being, and as long as money meant for salaries is about to be diverted to other things, it shuts down. Those departments of government were shut down, this is the only way that you can prevent corruption. (Crowd claps …)
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