Polls: Utomi tasks youth on rigging
BY CLIFFORD NDUJIHE & EMMANUEL ELEBEKE
PRESIDENTIAL candidate of the Social Democratic Mega Party, SDMP, Prof. Pat Utomi, yesterday, urged youths not to succumb to the intimidation of desperate politicians by resisting manipulation at the forthcoming polls.
Specifically, he charged them to get listed as voters, vote at the polls and defend their votes. Uotmi spoke after his presentation at the third pre-awards youth conference organised by The Future Award 2011, at the University of Lagos, yesterday.
Frowning at what he called redundancy of today’s youths, Utomi urged the youths to participate in every stage of the electioneering process and be inthe front of the campaign for revolution and credible polls in the country because their future lies in the outcome of the elections.
Also, in a statement, he said he would make upgrade of infrastructure a top priority, if elected because the nation’s infrastructure were in dire need of an upgrade.
In a statement yesterday, Utomi, who also ran for the presidency in 2007 said: “The dilapidated infrastructure in Nigeria is the bane of development and attraction of foreign investments. In the first week of our being sworn in, we will marshal all the financial capability of the nation with private and corporate national and international developmental fund to initiate an eight-lane coastal highway from Lagos to Calabar.”
“Also, we will open up the rail network with rail lines going from Lagos to Kaduna and Kano; Lagos to Calabar and Kano to Calabar. This is calculated to create in the minimum a million jobs for Nigerians as well as open up the country for the inflow of investment, nationally and internationally.”
Noting that it was important to attract the best brains available to Nigeria, locally and in the diaspora, irrespective of party affiliation, he said he would put up a “Best_in_Class” government, individuals and technocrats that are passionately_minded to institute change in our government, economic, diplomatic and political life.”
On corruption, Utomi posited that, “that the highest antidote against corruption is personal example. In all places where societies have been able to stare down corruption, personal example by the political leaders and elites had been key. You cannot allow double standard if you want to fight corruption.”
