Pioneer national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Adebisi Akande, yesterday said Nigeria, under President Bola Tinubu, will remain a more peaceful, developed and prosperous country.
He however said the tension and threats generated by those opposed to Tinubu’s presidential victory in the 2023 election was not a surprise.
Akande stated this at a Lecture organised by Arewa Think Tank to celebrate one year achievements of the administration of President Tinubu.
The elder statesman, who was chairman of the gathering, said the opposition to Tinubu’s emergence as president was not strange because there had always been opposition even before independence, especially by those who never wanted a united country.
He said, “Since 1953, when a motion for Independence was first moved in Parliament by Chief Tony Enahoro, our polity has been moving from tensions of one threat to another that Nigeria must not be allowed to continue as one and united country.”
The elder statesman further added, “Towards the last elections, the prophecy was thick that Bola Ahmed Tinubu would not become the APC candidate, he did become. Religious clerics of one belief and the other became sleepless for him not to win the presidential elections, he won. Spiritual threats and political maneuvering began thereafter that he would not be inaugurated as a Nigerian president, he assumed the presidency.
“The battle shifted to the judicial sword-crossing that he should be removed from the presidency, his presidency became upheld. Other predictions were that he would have no health to manage the office, he remained divinely healthy.
“Then the agitation that Nigeria would not survive his political agenda, Nigeria has been waxing stronger and stronger as one and united country. One Nigeria is a major part of what we are now celebrating.
“I was the pioneer national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) – the great political party that produced the President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu whose one year administrative anniversary was being officially celebrated since over a week up to yesterday.
“I am therefore particularly convinced that Nigeria will forever continue to be sustained as a more peaceful, more developed, more progressive and a more prosperous country under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and beyond.”
He urged all to be thinking about how to sustain a united, peaceful and prosperous Nigeria. “May our collective and individual aspirations within a better and most respectable Nigeria be divinely realised,” he added.
Earlier, in his opening remarks, the chief convener Arewa Think Tank, Muhammad Alhail Yakubu informed that, “The objective of the event is aimed at strengthening and encouraging the ‘Renewed Hope Agenda’ of President Bola Tinubu which has several laudable brilliant layers linked to foreign investment drive, energizing the health sector, making education affordable for the poor and underserved, delivering good governance amidst debt burden, social and economic transformation, driving peace and religious harmony, as well as measures to combat rural banditry and insecurity across the country.
“The one-year stewardship of President Tinubu has recorded remarkable and impressive achievements in many aspects of governance considering the level of mismanagement and unfavorable security situation he inherited from the previous administration. As such, it behoves on all patriotic citizens to support him, especially ‘his cabinet ministers and appointees to achieve greater successes necessary to propel the effectiveness, efficiency, and sustainability in governance and development that will ensure peace, progress, and unity of the country”.