The president Nigeria needs in 2023

Unsettled by abysmal leadership currently on offer by the political class, Nigerians earnestly look forward to a rescue mission at the 2023 general polls.

Statesmen, groups, and even politicians are not left out of the anticipation, with some interesting permutations in the jostle for the next Presidential candidate.

But beyond primitive sentiments of ethnicity, religion, and age cap, the primacy of noble character, commitment cum capacity to building a country that is as rich as its diversity should not be an afterthought. In reality, turning a broken nation into a hopeful one will require more committed leadership and citizens’ engagement than Nigeria has ever had.
   
Nigerians in early 2015 rallied behind the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its change mantra to elect President Muhammadu Buhari as a rebuke of the maladministration of the incumbent Goodluck Jonathan and his People’s Democratic Party (PDP). It was the first time a party in power and a sitting president had failed at the polls and expectations were high on the incoming. But six years down the line, even Buhari’s loyalists are scandalised by the enormity of ineptitude on parade, worsened by unparalleled nepotism and sectarianism.
  
Clearly, the country is vastly divided along its fault lines with the drumbeat of secession rolling faster and harder among ethnic groups. By sheer complicity or negligence of police and armed forces, banditry, kidnappings, terrorism and other shades of criminality are wider than ever before. Economic woes and soaring inflation have also worsened endemic poverty as more Nigerians dropped below the poverty line in the last six years. It is indeed a country worse than that repudiated by electorates heading into 2015.