Nigeria’s leading political economist and Co-convener, National Consultative Forum, Prof. Pat Utomi, has said that Nigeria must not be allowed to go the way of Somalia. Utomi, who recently joined forces with others to form Third Force Mega Party Alliance, it is not a matter of what they expect as there no options anymore because the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) are in crossroads.

He said "these parties are one and the same and they have done a lot to ruin a country of destiny. Over 20 years of continuous damage, the culture of politicking in Nigeria has to change dramatically or else there won’t be Nigeria in 2027, I can tell you that

We have dropped to becoming the poverty capital of the world. You have never been to hell and I have never been there too. But if you live in Nigeria in the last three weeks, you must have an idea of what hell is; no electricity, no water, no diesel, no petrol and nothing that makes life bearable.

"In the middle of these, people are being slaughtered all over the place, whether they are going in train to Kaduna, or they are in their homes sleeping in Edo or Nasarawa State, or Zamfara, this is a mass murder field. It is frightening, it is terrible, that’s not even where I’m going, in the middle of all these, look at the swagger of the people that are supposed to be running the country. Look at how they are spending public money to oil their ego; Nigerians are extraordinary and wonderful people, in any other country they would lynch these guys.

"They would lynch them on the streets in any other country, because they are getting away with murder. We have no choice, we cannot continue, these guys, we must show them the red card, they must get out of the way. The question should be how well is the alternative getting ready to change all of these things. That is why we are not rushing out announcing candidates, announcing this and that, it is n o t business as usual. I went as far as calling for a transition government of national unity, that was last week. This mess cannot continue, it’s not sustainable. We might end up like Somalia, do you want to be like Somalia.

"This is what the conversation is, it’s not about third force, it is how can we get out of this mess that these guys constitute. They have no conscience, people are dying and they are talking in front of television cameras like emperors. It’s like when David told the people of Israel about the problem in the land and everybody tore their clothes and they sat on ashes. These guys should be sitting on ashes. People are dying and they are swaggering, are they human beings at all?" he stated.

He added that the role Nigerians should play is the role that the Filipinos played when they chased Ferdinand Marcos out,

"Nigerians should be united to get these people to say farewell to power, they need to come out in different ways to protest and say we have had enough of you. We need a leadership that focuses on the people, sacrificial and focuses on solving problems for the people, not obsessed with self, not a narcissism, that has become the culture of the PDP and the APC.

"We want a new order that focuses on service and sacrificial living by people in power, not politics of big men. Public office must be about service, not big men that do not feel shame and go to Dubai and even the wife of their President lives in Dubai, a place that was a desert a few years ago," he said.

(Story adapted from New Telegraph)

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