Dankwambo as PDP presidential flag-bearer, by Adamu Hassan Buzaye

As the march towards the 2019 general elections gathers momentum, aspirants to various elective offices across the political party divides have been bracing up for their individual aspired elective seats, from states and national assemblies, governorship, and the much coveted nation’s seat, the presidency.
The electoral umpire has already set the ball rolling with drawing up elections time-table which is being religiously followed by the political parties in both knees-up and serious mindedness to promote electoral fortunes and ensure democratic governance as hallmark of civilian administration.
The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) led by President Muhammadu Buhari has only one aspirant/candidate to the 2019 presidential election.
The main opposition Peoples democratic Party (PDP), that hitherto ruled for 16 consecutive years only to allow the APC in 2015 wrest power from it, has no less than ten aspirants each trying to grasp the party’s ticket.
They include former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, former PDP governors Ahmed Makarfi, Sule Lamido, Rabi’u Kwankwaso, cross-carpeted APC- PDP turned governor Aminu Tambuwal, and former minister Tanimu Turaki.
Also in the contest onto the nation’s plum seat under the PDP include the incumbent Senate President Bukola Saraki who is hell-bend to grasp the presidency seat, and the age-longed presidential aspirant Attahiru Bafarawa.
Former governor Ibrahim Shekarau has just shifted the post from PDP to APC in search of Kano Senate seat, whereas the vibrant and promising Governor Ibrahim Hassan Dankwambo of Gombe state takes the stage to Aso-Rock Villa comes 2019 polls.
Dankwambo, who declared for Nigeria’s President under the PDP on August 4, 2018, said his declaration followed wide consultations with party members and Nigerians of diverse background.
In addition, various political meetings within the ranks and file of the PDP across the country have adopted Governor Dankwambo as a consensus presidential candidate of the party ahead the 2019 elections.
Dankwambo is a technocrat who served as a member CBN Board of Directors, President AccountantsGeneral and Auditors-General Forum of West Africa, and Board member Extractive Industries Transparency International.
A product of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), he holds Second Class Upper degree in Science Accounting, and Master’s degree in economics from University of Lagos.
The Gombe Governor had in 1985 worked with Coopers and Lybrand before he joined the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) where for over a decade held several positions before he was appointed Accountant-General of Gombe state.
A Chartered Accountant by profession, Dankwambo served as Accountant-General of the Federation between 2005 – 2011 during which he introduced far-reaching reforms into the nation’s economic sector that include the Treasury Single Account now being successfully implemented by the Buhari administration, E-Payment and Integrated Payroll Personal Information System (IPPIS), and Government Integrated Finance Management Information System (GIFMIS), to mention but a few.
Having served for six years as Accountant-General of the federation, Dankwambo in 2011 resigned his appointment to take active part in partisan politics, consequently contested the gubernatorial elections in Gombe and won, with his tenure witnessing massive infrastructural development that shaped the landscape of the state.
Dankwambo’s seven years of stewardship of visionary leadership and prudent management of resources, coupled with transparency and accountability has made him turn Gombe state into a model in spite of meagre resources.
Dankwambo’s visionary leadership is further heightened by his commitment to accountability and transparency in governance with a view to strengthening fiscal performance and sustainability at the state level.
Gombe under Dankwambo witnessed tremendous socio-economic and political transformation that saw the construction and rehabilitation of over 3, 000 km stretch roads across the state, as well as the establishment of a modern Commodity Depot & Exchange Centre, Gombe International Conference Centre, and Automation of the State Revenue Collection System for effective public finance, among others.
Dankwambo was also instrumental to the establishment of Talba Empowerment Scheme that saw self-reliance in youths, who were not only gainfully employed but are also employers of labour in nooks and crannies of the state resulting from uninterrupted supply of electricity.
A Ph.D.
holder in Accounting, Dankwambo while declaring his intention to contest for the nation’s plum seat, said, “I am running, and I will win.
Extensive consultations have been done and Nigerians will soon see a wind of genuine renaissance blowing all over their land”.
The governor had realized that what Nigeria needs at this critical time is a man who can take the country to its best, a man who can re-energize the people who have been desperately led that they have accepted a certain impotence as the reality of their lives.
It is also the opinion of the North East Forum for Better Nigeria, a pressure group saddled with the responsibility of promoting the political course of Dankwambo that a nation bedeviled by corruption, insecurity, crime, nepotism, unemployment, among others, hardly succeed in selling its policies and programmes to its citizens without recourse to the likes of Dankwabos.
The forum chairman, Adamu Hassan Buzaye, noted that the ability of any government to fulfill its constitutional duties depends largely on its capacity to generate the needed funds to promote growth and development for citizens, hence Dankwambo’s triple disposition of transparency, accountability and sustainability, coupled with his zeal and commitment to implement farreaching policies and programmes will definitely take Nigeria to the promised land.
Dankwambo’s presidential aspiration similarly get the morale booster of the PDP Governors Forum that indisputably resolved that the party’s presidential ticket should be flown by a serving PDP governor, not past ones as now being struggled and manipulated by the likes of Kwankwasos, Lamidos and Makarfis, talk less of Tambuwals that quite recently cross-carpeted to the PDP.
With the new twist by the PDP hierarchy ahead of the party’s forthcoming primaries, it is envisaged that PDP-controlled states in the federation will elect Governor Ibrahim Hassan Dankwambo as the presidential flag bearer to slug it out with President Buhari in the 2019 polls.
The PDP, all other registered political parties, and indeed generality of Nigerians are of the belief that the parties having zoned the presidency to the North in the 2019 general elections be accorded to the Northeast that has been deprived of the plum seat ever since the demise of Nigeria’s late prime-minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, in 1966.
The Northcentral and Northwest have already either in military or civilian drive been on the saddle.
Dankwambo as a governor and PDP presidential hopeful has been a man of Nigerians generally.
He is an administrator par excellence and prudent manager of resources, taking Gombe state to unprecedented heights in the comity of states thereby earning the accolades to carry the party’s flag to the February 2019 presidential polls.
Buzaye is Chairman, North East Forum for Better Nigeria, No.
56, Murtala Mohammed Way, Bauchi