Presidential aspirant, Kingsely Moghalu has finally chosen the Young Progressive Party as the platform in which to contest for the Presidency in the coming 2019 election.
The former deputy governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) who has long declared his intention to run for president has finally chosen a platform to push his campaign for presidency in the coming elections.
“I have chosen the Young Progressive Party as the platform in which to contest for the Presidency of this country,” Moghalu announced on his twitter page.
Moghalu in his previous campaign has promised to scale up human capital investments, promote renewable energy and turn a blind eye to the crude oil that has greased the economy for decades.
“My economic vision is one that is not based on oil or natural resources, but on innovation and human capital,” Moghalu said in an exclusive interview with BusinessDay.
“My government will take on unemployment through the creation of a N500 billion venture capital fund to boost SMEs access to finance and create jobs.
“A competent government does not create jobs; rather it creates an enabling environment for jobs to be created. We will subsidise production but we will never subsidise consumption. That will stimulate the economy while creating jobs at the same time,” he said.
Africa’s most populous country is scheduled to hold presidential elections in February next year as well as vote for lawmakers and state governors.
The distaste among Nigerians for incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari has festered, after series of policy missteps from a 15-month resistance to float the naira and delays in appointing cabinet ministers and signing off the federal budget contributed to the economy’s first recession in a quarter of a century.
According to Moghalu, the time had come for technocrats, intellectuals and experienced people to take power from career politicians. “The future of Nigeria rests in technocratic interventions. We need thinking people that will take Nigeria from the politics of stomach infrastructure to politics of mental infrastructure,’’ he said at an event recently. Moghalu hinged his presidential ambition on the need to reposition Nigeria for economic prosperity “by creating an enabling environment for a productive, innovation-led economy, with a better approach to taxation that will reduce dependence oil revenues.”
“My government will establish a productive innovation-led economy that reduces dependence on oil revenues, establish a public-private venture capital fund with a minimum capital of N500 billion (with private sector co-investment to fund could attain a size of N1 trillion) to create jobs by investing in new businesses by unemployed youth, reform the Nigerian Police Force by recruiting, training and equipping a minimum of 1.5 million persons with improved remuneration to create safe and secure communities, empower women with a 50:50 gender parity policy in political appointments, and initiate a constitutional restructuring of Nigeria to restore true federalism for stability and prosperity,” he added.
The erudite professor of International Business had during his declaration lamented that nearly 60 years ago, the vision and hope of Nigeria’s founding fathers such as Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo and Ahmadu Bello, have not materialized following successive years of misrule. He added that military rule, oil boom and bursts and failures of the civilian political class have combined to rob Nigeria of what seemed its destiny at independence in 1960.
