A former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara has warned that Nigeria must get the 2023 elections right and elect the right people to avoid what he called the apocalyptic first four in the country.
The former Speaker, who stated this on Saturday at the 10th Convocation of the Achievers University, Owo, Ondo State, while tracing how Nigeria got to the present crossroad, said: “Our inability to place the youths on sustainable career paths has turned this useful demography from dutiful labourers to disaffected rebels.”
Speaking specifically on the 2023 elections, Dogara said Nigeria needed a team whose pedigree matched their rhetoric for unity, peace and progress.
“Our most immediate challenge now is to bring our disparate peoples together and pull down our barriers, otherwise we cannot build. Issues of development, although absolutely important, are not the most immediate.
“Make no mistake, if we dare get it all wrong in 2023, we would have succeeded in hastening the days of the first four – the famous horsemen of the apocalypse on ourselves – days that will be marked by conquest, war, famine and death. May God forbid,” the former speaker said.
Dogara also bemoaned the current security challenge in Nigeria, adding that some parts of the country are fast becoming a hotbed of instability.
He also declared that Nigeria was at war with itself and that for the country, which had reached an inflicting point, to be brought back from the precipice, Nigerians must change the way they think and act.
According to Dogara, the present challenges confronting the country had long been foretold, noting that the warnings were flagrantly ignored, hence the current doldrums the country had been plunged into.
