Presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) Dumebi Kachikwu, has challenged members of the current 9th National Assembly to impeach their leaders first before President Muhammadu Buhari.
Kachikwu said the President ought to have been impeached seven years ago in his first year in office, alleging that President Buhari had committed all unimpeachable offences.
The presidential candidate, however, pledged to create social support structures for the aged in given opportunity to serve Nigeria as President.
Kachikwu spoke with newsmen Wednesday in Abuja, during a condolences visit to the residence of ADC’s Board of Trustees Chairman, Senator Patricia Akwashiki, who lost her mother, Mama Maryama Abimiku, recently.
The condolences visit to the BOT chairman was led by the party’s national chairman, Chief Ralph Nwosu, other NWC members and the vice presidential candidate in attendance.
According to the presidential candidate; “The President ought to have been impeached seven years ago in his first year of office, his failures didn’t start today, it started there. All the impeachable offences National Assembly wants to list now, seven years ago we should have listed these impeachable offences, there’s nothing different.
“If they are doing it now, it means they have made Nigerians suffer for nothing, thousands dead, tens of thousands displaced, the economy has collapsed, our streets flow with the blood of the innocent, our borders are porous for terrorists.
“Our farms are no longer existent, we now sell human organs as one of our main businesses in Nigeria, kidnapping is on rise. There’s no area you can say this president has done well. Whatever impeachable offence we are talking about now has existed for the last couple of years, why today, it’s self-serving.
“Before they impeach the President, they ought to impeach the leadership of the National Assembly, who is complicit in the failures of this President. Government is shared responsibilities.
They ought to impeach them so that we know those people who supported him to stay this long ought to also leave, so that we have a new era of leadership who can usher us in to the next level.”
Speaking on his plans for the aged Nigerians if elected President, Kachikwu said his government will pride itself on making Nigeria work for all Nigerians.
“Obviously the aged, weak, young and women, poor people, are a segmented of society that are always under-supported. My plan is to create social support structures for these people. Our government is a government that will pride itself on making Nigeria work for everyone so on that level they will be taken care of.
But as a people, as Nigerians we need to start reaching and preaching love and tolerance and help that can lift these people up. When you look at recession, this segment of society are the ones who feel it the most.
“Government needs to start putting up support structures, my government will definitely thrive on that.”
He decried lack of old people’s homes which he said should been a private sector driven enterprise.
“As a society we don’t even have old people’s homes, which should be a private sector driven enterprise, but where the private sector is lacking government needs to also step up to give a direction so that the private sector can then follow. If we put things like this in place they would do better in society.
“We also find that when we look at our field pension schemes in Nigeria, a lot of these people give all their years to service and eventually their pensions are stolen. We hear cases of people queuing outside government offices and after a while you hear that some of them have died, never receiving their pension.
“These are all horror stories we hear from people suffering from failed government policies, we need to address the situation. Nigeria cannot act as if they are not part of us, they are our parents, we need to support them.”
