Don’t divide Nigeria, Olawepo-Hashim tells presidential candidates

The Indigenous 2023: A chieftain of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) and former  presidential candidate, Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim has warned presidential candidates of the various political parties against further widening the existing gulf and divisions in the country in their race and ambition for 2023.

In a statement from his media office in Abuja, yesterday, Olawepo-Hashim explained that in the quest for power by the candidates,  rather than addressing  issues that are germaine to our nationhood, the actors have been inflaming the passion of tribal and religious anger among the people.

The supporters of the candidates, he added, are also driving  their campaigns and marketing of their candidates via intimidation, threat, disinformation and blackmail, without any word of caution from their principals.

Olawepo-Hashim, People’s Trust presidential candidate in the  2019 general  election, recalled that even before independence, Nigeria had a rich history of politics and political campaigns, which gave the electorates big opportunity to interrogate the candidates and party programmes before making informed choices and decisions.

“Campaigns were built around issues which had been properly elucidated in the party’s manifestoes. Parties  were also held accountable for their programmes and the candidates toed  the line of the parties in their conducts and utterances.”

According to him, “in the first Republic, the four dominant parties: the AG, the NPC, the NCNC and NEPU were distinct and original in form and deeds before the electorates.

“Ditto  in the  second  Republic when we had the NPN, the UPN, the NPP, GNPP, PRP and the NAP which were known by their programmes and issues raised in their campaigns.”

He lamented that “what is however at play presently is sadly at variance with the good old days. While the country is presently held down by the demons of insecurity, energy/power, education and unemployment crisis, the parties and the political actors are dancing around these critical issues.”

He also maintained that “sadly  the North is currently being divided between Christians and  Muslims and not-Muslim -enough, while the South is being ripped apart by propaganda that pitch Christians of  the South West against their Muslim siblings on the one hand, Yorubas against the Igbo on the other hand as well as the old against the young.”

The parties he said, have lost their voices and supremacy to the rampaging candidates and their army of supporters.

“The point is that there is danger ahead if this monster is not tamed.

“Our democracy faces the danger of  been  trapped by a self inflicted convulsion which may damage the current fragile ethno-religious situation in the country,” he added.

Olawepo-Hashim argued that the “nation  cannot afford to crash this democratic process on the altar of narrow self-interest by politicians who are merely on a mission of personal ambition and self-aggrandizement.”