OWERRI – Amidst the persistent clamour by the southeast region for a President of Igbo extraction to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari, the Chairman of the National Democratic Mandate Group (NDMG) Imo State chapter, Chikwe Nwachukwu has advised champions of the project to drop their agitation which he said is both parochial and naïve.

According to him, in­stead of being immersed in the quest for a President of Igbo extraction, the van­guards and champions of the agitation should rather embark on a clinical search for a leader with the neces­sary vision capacity fore­sight and administrative acumen who believes in justice, unity and equity to rescue the nation from its current state of abyss irre­spective of his geopolitical zonal background.

In an exclusive inter­view with our correspon­dent, the NDMG chieftain argued that given the cur­rent state of the nation, Ni­gerians should purge them­selves of tribal sentiments and ethnic cleavages and look for a visionary leader who has the interest of the nation at heart to tackle the litany of woes confronting the people.

“Before, Dubai was al­most a desert out, today, it has become the world destination center for commerce, industry, agri­culture, manufacturing, science and technology and this was made possible by a purposeful, dynamic, visionary and pragmatic leadership and this is what we want.”

Nwachukwu, who de­cried the poor state of the nation’s economy which he largely attributed to heavy dependence on oil for reve­nue insisted that effective and judicious harnessing of the nation’s bounteous natural resources remains the panacea to remedy the situation.

“All the six (6) geo-polit­ical zones of this country are blessed with natural resources but past admin­istrations concentrated on oil for our survival and failed to do the needful. The world is moving away from dependence to oil hence we should make good use of our God-given resources.

“The defunct Gongola State can generate power and supply same to the Fed­eral Government and even export it to other coun­tries, generate revenue and attract investors who will build power plants and create job for the youths.

“We can generate bio-gas which is domestic cooking gas and bio-fuel which will also fuel bio-plant”.

The politician boasted that the NMDG which had been firmly established in all the 36 states of the Federation and in seven countries in the diaspora is working round the clock to take over power from the All Progressive Congress (APC) next year.

While calling for more protective measures to deal with the security challeng­es rocking the nation, Nwa­chukwu assured that an NDMG controlled Federal Government would among other things concentrate on agricultural revolu­tion with emphasis on the promotion of cow rearing business to make breeding business lucrative enter­prise.

This, he said would en­courage rice and maize farmers even as he advised the Federal Government to discard the proposed removal of fuel subsidy in order not to worsen the plight of the already im­poverished masses.