Convener of the New Nigerian Group (NNG), Sam Ohuabunwa announced his decision to run for the presidency in 2023 on Wednesday.
Ohuabunwa made this known while addressing members of the press at the media launch of the NNG.
Ohuabunwa who is also a pharmacist said he aimed to build morality into politics because he believed that was a great solution to Nigerian politics.
“Someone told me that there is no morality in politics and I told him I will not be a politician if there is no morality in politics. Because without morality and ethical conduct we are gone. So in the new Nigeria, we are building morality into politics,” he said.
He said that if he is elected into office he would focus on the issues of poverty, corruption, injustice ad insecurity, stating that addressing these issues will address other problems in the country.
The event which took place at the Shehu Yar’Adua Centre was to present to NNG a group that was guided along the lines of restoring such values as knowledge, industrialisation, patriotism, justice, freedom and godliness.
He mourned a Nigeria where citizens were not recognised except by their state of origin using his own case as a point of reference. His parents and grandparents were born in Rivers State but he still had to use Abia State as his state of origin proving the lines of the divide of the country.
Ohuabunwa though is yet to announce which party’s flag he will bear in 2023 explaining that NNG was just a group of like-minded people that could house members of various political parties.
“We are not partisan, we don’t belong to any particular group. Among our members are APC, CDC and other parties. Everybody is a member of this, because at the end of the day poverty does not differentiate between people, hunger does not differentiate along the lines of height or weight, we are all people in one boat and fellows in one ship and if the ship goes down, we go down, if it comes up, we come up. Presently, we are down and we want to come up.”
Earlier this month, Ohuabunwa said he was being encouraged to run for president in 2023 by the Coalition of Nigerian Group as he is of Igbo extraction.
Farouq Mohammed, chairman of the group, asked for the support of the press. he also said that Ohuabunwa would correct the problem of bad governance in the country.
“I am going to urge all of us that are here to please be transparent and honest enough to share this message because it is a message that we need to share across the country. To sing a song so that people can understand and hear about this good man that we all need to support so that he can transform this country,” he said.
“We have seen how we thought that the present administration is going to be better than the previous ones. We have all seen that it is worse than the previous ones. We keep going from bad to worse every day. So I am calling on all of us in this room today. There are various platforms through which you can disseminate this message.”