Buhari at the palace of the Emir of Ilorin, Zulu Gambari
The presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the February 14 election, Muhammadu Buhari, yesterday, promised Nigerians gainful employment if elected, as the party’s research has shown that rejuvenating farming and mining would ensure more jobs.
Buhari, who spoke in Ilorin, Kwara State capital, when his campaign train got to the state, also said that he would block all means of corruption in Nigeria and use the resources to provide scholarship, qualitative education, gainful empowerment and infrastructure development.
Once he got to Ilorin, Buhari went to the palace of the Emir of Ilorin, Alhaji Zulu Gambari to pay him a courtesy visit.
“The APC has identified these problems and wherever we go, we repeat these fundamental problems Nigeria is going through, of insecurity, of the depletion of the economy and corruption. From the airport to here, we saw the faces of hundreds of youths and it is believed that 60 per cent of the youths in Nigeria are unemployed whether they have finished school or not,” the APC presidential candidate said at the palace.
“Our talented children who don’t have opportunity to go to schools, whose parents cannot afford to send them to schools, we will cooperate with the local governments to have a scholarship system where talented Nigerians could be identified and properly educated”.
In his response, the Emir said: “General Buhari is not a visitor to Ilorin, he has been associating with us, we have been associating with him in Ilorin and the emirate and in fact the whole of Kwara State with his renown with our son, General Tunde Idiagbon. They are like twins in effect both in effect and outside office.”
“I worked with him around 1976, he was then the governor of then North-eastern state comprising now about six states and he was the coordinator to divide the north east into three-Borno, Gongola and Bauchi. So he had to swear in the Permanent Secretaries who had been deployed into these divisions. I was lucky to be among one of them as Solicitor-General for Gongola. Little did I know I would continue to meet him?
“I thank God that I met him; he is a man of honour. The first time he realized I was in Maiduguri was when I attended the council which he was presiding. And then he asked the Secretary, ‘who is that young man, they said Zulu Gambari from Ilorin’. He asked, ‘what is he doing here?’ Then General said, ‘what is his rank?’ They said, ‘Senior State Counsel.’ He said, ‘That is not a rank, go and give him a title. Is there no other rank there (in the judiciary)?’ They said there were Attorney-General, Solicitor-General. He asked, ‘after that, what else?’ They said DPP, he said, ‘then go and give him for the mere fact that he has come all the way from Ilorin.’
“So he is a man of justice, he wants to do justice. Nigeria, the whole country is looking forward to you to do justice. You have a very heavy responsibility as you rightly said. To get there is nothing but to be safely and attentively there. It is almost dinosaur that he would get there having been there before but your task is very heavy.”
The National Leader of APC, Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu reminded Nigerians of the promise President Goodluck Jonathan made to provide jobs for the unemployed youths when he asked the Interior Minister Abba Moro to exploit money from poor Nigerians and instead of jobs he provided deaths and nothing was done about it. Tinubu was referring to the Immigration jobs scam, which led to the death of about 18 applicants.
Tinubu said February 14, 2015 is a golden opportunity for all Nigerians to change the destiny of this country once and for all by voting for Buhari and his running mate, Professor Yemi Osibajo, and indeed all the party’s candidates in order to effect the much desired change.
The leader of APC in Kwara state, Dr Bukola Saraki, excitedly said going by the unprecedented crowd of party supporters, Kwarans had spoken that they are going to vote for Buhari and all APC candidates.