2023: Nigeria doesn’t need part-time president, says Saraki

Former Senate President and presidential aspirant of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Sen. Bukola Saraki, has said Nigeria does not need a part-time president.

Saraki said Nigeria needs a president that will always be available to attend to the needs of the country.

The former Senate President stated this while addressing PDP delegates in Ogun State on Monday after holding a closed-door meeting with former President Olusegun Obasanjo at his penthouse residence in the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL).

The presidential aspirant, who was accompanied by the former PDP National Chairman, Abubakar Kawu Baraje, arrived Obasanjo’s residence at about 12.04 pm before moving to the party’s secretariat to address the delegates.

Saraki, a two-term former governor of Kwara State, stressed that he remains the only aspirant with the energy and capacity to bear the workload and the demands of the office of the president.

He said: “Only a president that is up and running can solve the worsening state of insecurity, bad economy and disunity in the country.

“We need a president that will stand, that is bold and courageous. We all know four years as the Senate President, I stood for this country, I stood for what I believed was in the interest of this country.

“Let us find that person who has the energy because the work of a president is not part-time, especially now the country is very bad.

“Nigeria needs a president that is up and running, not a President that will be giving instructions because when you give instructions and you don’t check nothing will happen.

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“You need somebody that has the energy to do it. I believe that I have that energy and capacity to do it,” the former governor stated.

Saraki, while addressing journalists earlier after his meeting with Obasanjo, said Nigeria is in a very delicate situation, adding that a wrong choice of president would spell doom for the country.

“We are in a very very delicate state as a nation and we need somebody who has the experience, somebody who can unite us because without unity we cannot go anywhere,” he added.

The former Senate President, while explaining the reason behind his visit to Obasanjo, said: “I’m in Ogun state to see PDP delegates, but I can’t come to Ogun State and not pay a visit to the former president, our father and leader of modern Nigeria, somebody I’m very closed to since I started my political career.

“So I came to see him to let him know that I’m in Ogun State and to see how good and how well he is doing. And we thank God for his health, his energy and his passion for this great country. It inspires us to see that definitely we need to turn this country around into a country that he wishes for and that all of us wish.”

He, therefore, expressed confidence in winning the PDP presidential primaries, saying: “I believe that the time today, the kind of leadership that this country requires, I can provide that leadership.”

The Star