Jerry Gana chases Buhari’s job

BY DAMOLA EMMANUEL

‘Nigeria is facing an existential threat, the seriousness and proportion of which have never been witnessed since the end of the civil war’

In the estimation of former Minister of Information, Prof. Jerry Gana, President Muhammadu Buhari is a colossal failure. And because the President has roundly failed to deliver on his electoral promises to Nigerians, according to the academic-turned-politician, he very badly wants the job.

Gana, 72, on Thursday, in Abuja, declared his intention to run for president come 2019.

Gana, who served as Information Minister under the interim government of Ernest Sonekan, unveiled his ambition to journalists at the national secretariat of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, where he had gone to purchase the mandatory form of expression of intent at the cost of N1million.

The erstwhile Information Minister regretted that never since the civil war had Nigeria been so soaked in tension as it currently was; and blasted the Buhari Administration for what he described as “failing to live up to its promises to Nigerians.”

Stating that he can do a better job than Buhari, the Professor of Geography declared: “With the utmost sense of responsibility and honour, I hereby express my well-considered interest to aspire as the presidential candidate of the SDP, with a view to ultimately contest in the forthcoming presidential elections in 2019.”

“Being a patriotic and committed democrat,” he continued, “who has carried a burden for the rapid, effective and even development of our dear nation for decades, I am deeply concerned with the very real prospect of Nigeria imploding unless our great party comes to the rescue with a God-fearing, dynamic leadership.

“Nigeria is facing an existential threat, the seriousness and proportion of which have never been witnessed since the end of the civil war.”

In addition to putting the economy on a sound footing, the scholar, who was the Director of the Mass Mobilization for Social Justice and Economic Recovery, popularly known as MAMSER, under the military regime of General Ibrahim Babangida, said if he won his party nomination and, subsequently, the Presidency, he would ensure that the pervasive insecurity in the land would be a thing of the past.