Bala Mohammed: I’m Ready To Work With Obi To Rescue Nigeria, Bring Good Governance
Bauchi State Governor, Bala Mohammed on Thursday held a closed door meeting with the Presidential Candidate of the 2023 election, Peter Obi, expressing optimism that they’re collaborating to rescue and recover Nigeria by delivering good governance. Obi, the former Governor of Anambra State, who was in company of former Minister of Finance, Sen. Nenadi Usman, Prof. Udenta Udenta, arrived at the Ramat House Presidential Lodge, Bauchi and went straight to hold a close door meeting with Mohammed. Speaking to journalists after the meeting, Mohammed, the Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party Governors’ Forum, said that Nigerians will see more of such meetings with Obi aimed at closing ranks and giving vibrant opposition to recover the country from those parading themselves as leaders. “I want to say, at this level not to make these doubting Thomases and mischievous minds preempt what we are doing, that me, as a person, I’m ready the work with Peter Obi and to make sure we come together and close ranks, we bring good governance to the country, we give vibrant opposition with knowledge, with timelines, with vision in such a manner that we will rescue and recover our country from this mediocres that are parading themselves as leaders. “Definitely, time has come when we must step out and do things with fidelity, with sincerity and focus and our coming together is a message and the message is going to resonate because all our colleagues, the governors, are behind this kind of journey because it is a transcendental one. “And I want to say that we are very grateful to Gov. Obi for coming here and we will take it up and take it further in a manner that, going forward, you will see more of these outings between us and Gov. Obi, PDP governors and PDP as a party,” he said. Continuing, he said: “Definitely, it is a delight to work with him and to listen to him, his deep knowledge and you could see the statistics and so on and so forth. “And we, in the PDP, as Chairman and my colleagues the Governors, we have always admired him and we have always shown interest because behind the scenes, I have been meeting him, this is not the first time we met. In fact, I met him in Abuja and I was going to meet him again but out of his normal humility, he decided to come here.” Governor Mohammed said that during the meeting, they discussed many challenges in the states like in Rivers State but “he may not have anything to do with that but he discussed it and I feel highly appreciative of what he is doing as a leader of the opposition because, whether we like it or not, he is the leader of the opposition now in Nigeria because of his position and pedigree.” He said he has a lot of respect and admiration for Obi because of his style of politics, his statesmanship, his versatile nature, his huge knowledge of the economy, his understanding of the country and a clear vision of Nigerian politics and politicking. Also speaking, Obi said he visited the Bauchi State Governor to discuss about Nigeria and to consult with him being the Chairman of the PDP Governors’ Forum and a critical person in Nigerian politics today. He said that given what Nigeria is going through, he felt it is necessary to come and discuss the future of the country stressing that: “My coming is just a consultation and discussion meeting that will continue to go on as we talk about the future of this country.” “All of you are aware of where we are today, what is happening in our country today and everything, we have to discuss issues happening in the north. Like I’ve told the Governor today, the north is a critical component today if we’re going to get it right in our country. “I’m a firm believer and I preach it everywhere that I go, when people say to me that there is so much criminality in Nigeria, especially when people talk about the north, I always say no, there’s poverty in Nigeria. You have to deal with the issue of poverty. Until you solve the issue of poverty, you can’t talk about criminality because when people do not know where the next meal will come from, nobody can hold what they can do. We can see poverty in the north but there’s also a future that is everywhere,” he added. Obi said that more investment needed to be made in critical areas like poverty, hunger, education, health and areas that can help pull Nigerians out of the quagmire they’re in at the moment so that criminality can be reduced. He said: “We need to invest in it so that children cannot continue going towards drugs. We need to care about their health, but as you can see in the political space now, we are not discussing all these. In the political space, what we are discussing now are mundane things whether it is budget padding, whether it is sexual harassment. Our people are hungry. “We need to discuss hunger, we need to discuss poverty, we need to discuss education, we need to discuss health. What concerns them should be the priority of the political class. We’re not in Nollywood, a people whose job is to do entertainment. ‘We have entertainment business and those of us in politics have taken into entertainment, so every morning, we come up with one story that does not concern the people. It is time to preoccupy ourselves with discussions of the people and that’s what I came to talk about. To talk about the issues that go wrong in different states, that’s why I came to see His Excellency, the Governor. “Like I said, it’s an ongoing discussion, it’s an ongoing thing about collaboration. You see me say that I want us to collaborate, I want us to come together as a body and everything but I want us to discuss what we are going to do together to build a better place for our children and to build a better Nigeria, that is more critical than anything. I assure you, Your Excellency, that there will be a continuation of my visit not for us to act any film but for us to make sure we discuss about the future of our country.”
Admin | 2025-03-14 06:30:56