Presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Mr. Dumebi Kachikwu, on Sunday, vowed to defend the future of Nigeria by sufficiently investing in education if he wins the presidential election come February 2023.
Kachikwu who spoke at a town hall meeting in Abuja on Sunday said if this generation has missed it, the next generation must get it right. ‘We owe this to ourselves.’
He also promised to stop public officers and their families from attending foreign schools and hospitals
To achieve this, the ADC presidential candidate, said he would sponsor a bill at the National Assembly that would be known as the Nigerian Patriot Act.
This piece of legislation, he said, would give all Nigerians, a level playing ground in terms of public facilities.
He described as unfair, situations, where public officers take advantage of the privileged positions to enroll their children in foreign schools on government bills.
“Our schools will have modern teaching aids and learning systems and our kids equipped with smart devices. We will retrain all our teachers and pay them better because they are our first line of defence.
“We will build first class hospitals not just for our citizens but for foreigners desiring first class medical services.”
He also said it does not make any sense for any Nigerian leader at any tier of of government to patronise foreign hospitals for medical care.
“We can’t have different rules for different criminals. If you do the crime, you do the time. If given the privilege to lead you, my first executive interface with the National Assembly will include a bill I have dubbed the Nigerian Patriot Act. It is a bill of equality and fairness.
“It is a bill that says we are all in this together. It is a bill that ensures that public servants cannot use the privileges they cannot provide to the common man. If you desire to be in the public service, you must use the same services the masses use.
“No private or foreign schools for our families, no private or foreign hospitals for us or our families, no generators or boreholes in our homes. If we desire efficient and effective education, healthcare, utilities, etc we must make it available to all, so that we may all equally benefit from it. This is how we will build a nation that works for everyone,”Kachikwu said.
The ADC Presidential Candidate, therefore, pledged to tackle insecurity with modern technologies and by recruiting additional one million soldiers into the Nigerian Army, adding that the money needed to fight insecurity and insurgency would not be diverted but would be strictly channeled to the purpose it was meant to address.
“Insecurity would be tackled effectively with technology and we would decentralise our Security institutions for efficiency,” he said, even as he condemned the current practice, where the federal government was borrowing foreign loans to construct amenities that would only benefit a few people in the society.
“We will turn our hundreds of kilometres of beach front land to international tourist destinations providing jobs to our people and bringing much needed foreign exchange.
“Our women will join us on the table of equality. They will be respected and promoted. They will be afforded the same opportunities men have. If they can do it, they will do it.
“The arts won’t be mere lip service in my administration. It only makes sense that we support our movie and music industry. They have made us proud and still make us proud. Investing in and promoting that industry is not only patriotic, but also makes perfect business sense.
“The technology exists to correct their decades long problem of distribution and piracy. This we will do.
“In this new Nigeria we won’t keep on shouting corruption when our very foundation is corrupt. We will engineer systems and processes that ensure that our citizens don’t turn to corruption by default.
“We will pay a fair pay for hard work.
We will no longer cheat our citizens with the ridiculous minimum wage we offer knowing that we leave them no other option than to steal. We will engineer systems and processes that block and eliminate avenues for corruption.””