As Nigeria marches into the 2023 general election year, it is quite important for opinion moulders to draw attention to a number of issues that should naturally determine who gets their vote at the end of the whole exercise, such attention will be on the perspective of such candidates; their antecedents, their fixation on key policy issues as well as their manifesto.

Nigeria truly is in dire need of leadership, now this is not a dismissal of the Buhari years, far from it, I have always argued that even with a few challenges, the Buhari administration trumps all PDP administrations by a mile and half. The administration could have done better but then it still gave its best unlike what the umbrella party gifted Nigerians for 16 years.

The kind of leadership the country needs now is one that will move it further the development cycle. It is the kind of leadership that will need to build on the numerous achievements of the Buhari administration as well as fix where the administration fared badly. Thus Nigeria walks down a  tight rope as anything other than what is been prescribed here may spell doom for the nation’s development as well as its stability. This is beyond quoting funny statistics and applying “container economy analysis” to every topic, beyond the skullduggery and the demagoguery presently witnessed from a particular candidate and his small horde of misguided supporters.

Of a truth, the four major candidates have the credentials to seek to become president, with Bola Tinubu, the APC candidate topping the list, closely followed by a Rabiu Kwakwanso , Atiku Abubakar and lastly my former Governor , Peter Obi. But like every election, only one candidate can be elected for a period of four years. I know a few will howl as well as intend to dismiss my ranking and choice of President, as a liberal, I welcome such angst and perhaps a debate over such and would urge those who feel otherwise to write their own!

Read Also; It’s in Igbo’s best interest to support Tinubu

What makes Tinubu thick? I will tell you, I first met Tinubu at a function he organized for activists with Alhaji Atiku Abubakar in 2007. This was when Atiku was been hounded by the Olusegun Obasanjo administration an administration in which  he was a sitting Vice President. Atiku could not even attend the event in Abuja as reports coming in then had it that his plane had been grounded in Owerri by the officers of the Department for State Security, DSS who were acting on orders from above.

Tinubu  rose to the occasion and spent an hour or so campaigning or selling the Atiku candidacy while lampooning the near entrenchment of a dictatorship, matter of fact, Lagos State was the only state Atiku had nicked in that election, this was vintage Tinubu a man who had fought the Abacha regime as well as the Obasanjo administration when the latter sought to stymie the opposition and lead Nigeria as a garrison commander of sorts. This is a man who’s home was democracy’s refuge when the instruments of state were wrongly channeled to silence the opposition or political figures who refused to play ball. This is a man who was a bulwark to the victims of electoral thievery, particularly in the 2007 elections. This is a man who rallied round the opposition becoming its motor force and was instrumental in the formation of the All Progressives Congress, APC which went on to end the behemoth hold of the PDP at the centre.

On the issue of governance, Tinubu stands as a colossus, haven demonstrated the laudatory example of fusing  innovative ideas into governance. Where other peer governors dawdled, Tinubu blazed the trail, delivering a number of firsts for the people of Lagos.

Among such firsts include the Independent Power Project that now supplies 270

MW to the National Grid as well as the massive electrification of 127 communities in Lagos, these were areas which had prior to his emergence as governor had never received electricity despite the state’s status as a former capital of the Federation.

On the economic scope, Tinubu again demonstrated immense flair and verve by raising the state’s  internally generated revenue from a paltry sum of 600 million Naira to over 7bn, leapfrogging Lagos from the backwaters to becoming Africa’s fifth largest economy. Combining such with the right mix of

Infrastructural drive as well as  attracting massive investments into the state which have helped transform the state into Nigeria’s most cosmopolitan area.

In the healthcare sector, Senator Bola Tinubu’s tenure as helmsman of the state witnessed a couple of giant strides. Under his watch Lagos State witnessed the creation of a Hospital Services Commission which regularised the provision of healthcare services  as well as raised the standards of such services all over the state. It is also a fact that the Tinubu administration was the first to roll out a state ambulance management scheme as well as a free healthcare policy for children below the age of 16 and the elderly from the age of 65 years.