As the 2019 elections in Nigeria is around the corner, the Presidential candidate of Nigeria For Democracy (NFD) party, Dr. Asuquo Archibong has issued a warning to some foreign countries against meddling into the electoral process in Nigeria.
The Akwa Ibom State born Presidential candidate who gave the warning in a press conference in Uyo on Thursday said it was wrong for some foreign countries to make statements that may affect the country’s forthcoming general elections.
He maintained that Nigeria has all it takes to conduct a credible noting that unnecessary interference from the foreign countries amounts to a slap to the integrity of Nigeria.
According to him, “This is a very stern warning to foreign powers most especially the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, France even the Federal Republic of Niger, to stay out of bussiness of Nigeria. They should not interfere. We welcome all observers to our elections but we do not welcome interference.
“We also have intervention. Intervention is a higher degree of interference. When any country makes any statement that is intended to affect the outcome of our elections, that is wrong; that is why I am warning the United State, United Kingdom, France, the European Union and Germany or any other foreign country.”
He noted that it was wrong for a president or a presidential candidate to sit down on a round with a foreigner to be advised on how to behave in the election days.
“I refuse and I will not accept any invitation from foreign countries to sit down with any foreign secretary of that country so as to be addressed or to be told how to behave in the electoral process.
“No candidate or presidential candidate should sit with any foreigner to be instructed on how to behave. We taught them how to behave, we taught them democracy and we brought the issue of one man, one vote. We brought the issue of how not to behave in the electoral process. Our party is a peaceful party. We would ensure that there would be no violence on election day,” he said.
Reeling out his blueprint, the Presidential candidate said he would invest more in power and diversify the sector noting that power is sine-qua-non to economic development of any country.
He maintained that he would develop more on solar power at different levels and with proper planning the hydro power due to abundance of rivers in Nigeria.
Archibong who said he would invest in education decried the constant strike action in the Nigeria Universities saying that the cost of campaign rally of the Federal government in one day can take care of the demands of the Academic Staff University Union ASUU.
He added that when elected as a president of Nigeria, he would embark on restructuring where true fiscal federalism will come into play and state police will be allowed to operate.
On the fight against corruption, Archibong said he would first strengthen the Judicial system and ensure that no arm of government is weakened by the undue interference of the other, explaining that when each arm of government is strong enough to exercise it’s powers and with the bringing up of policies that would improve on the standard of living of the people, corruption will be highly reduced.
“Nigeria is a unique country. I have visited a lot of countries and this is the only country that has given up hope in terms of power supply. So how do we resolve this, we know what the challenges are but what we do not really pay attention on how to resolve it.
“even if we know how to resolve it, we lack the political will, financial will and we lack the stamina for the resolution. We have a negligible generating power. In every developed country, there are five sources of generating power and in Nigeria we generate from one source. So we have to diversify our sources of generating power. We also have to strengthen the financial sectors.
“Nigeria needs to be restructured. We must have fiscal federalism which means generating of funds within a state for the growth of the state. I am also advocating for jurisdictional federalism, that is when you have the state being granted more power; it means that the state must have more police where the state government must provide protection for its citizens”. He said.
