The Senator representing Oyo Central Senatorial District, Teslim Folarin, has charged politicians in the country to focus more on how to deliver good governance to Nigerians, rather than dissipating energy on who becomes president in 2023.
Folarin while speaking with journalists at the weekend after donating a 500kva transformer to his Oja-Igbo community in Ibadan, said the statement credited to the Governor Nasir El Rufai of Kaduna State, on jettisoning zoning for competence in the race for 2023 presidential election, was too early for deliberation.
The former Senate Leader said it was unfair to Nigerians to be talking about 2023 when the last election was conducted this year, adding that “our people deserve good governance.”
He nevertheless said he expected people to start jostling and going into realignment much earlier because President Muhammadu Buhari would not be contesting again as he is constitutionally leaving the office in 2023.
He noted that the jostling should not start now.
He said, “2023 is still very far, but I know that the dynamic will change before then. It is normal because we have a president who is not coming back in 2023. Because of that, the race will start much earlier. Everybody has to be very careful now because the position of the president depends largely on the party. And also, the office of the president is like a moving train, if you stand in the front of it, it will crush you.
“I expect a lot of jostling, alignments and realignments in the next one year but now, I think what we should do is to focus on how to deliver dividends of democracy to our people. I was a senator for eight years and out of office for another eight years and I understand our people need good governance. Anybody can say anything but when the time comes, we will see how it goes.”
Folarin said as the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Local Content, he would ensure that many Nigerians who were casual workers with multinational companies were absorbed as staff and rise to the top echelon.
“We discovered that Nigerians have capacity to do what expatriates are doing and we need to train them. We want to know why Nigerians are not involved in the top echelon of the oil companies in Nigeria and see how they can be embraced to top management positions. We are going to do a great job for Nigerians in that aspect,” he said.
