ABUJA — Former Military President, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, has suggested that the next president of Nigeria come 2023 should be in his 60s because of the nature of the work of the country’s leader.
Babangida, popularly known as IBB spoke during an exclusive interview with Arise Television on Friday morning said one of the reasons Nigeria has refused to progress and achieve the dreams of the founding fathers was because Nigerians no longer believed in the future of their own country.
Babangida who was confident that the nation is endowed with both human and natural resources, said those in their 60s, had the capacity to become president and could effectively run the country.
He advised Nigerians to go for the person that has what it takes to transform the country when the time comes.
“Individuals in their 60s should be the focus of Nigerians as potential presidential candidates in 2023.”
“The persons in their 6os with contacts across the nation and who had been traversing the geo-political zones marketing their acceptability and capacity.”
The former leader accused Nigerians of creating and at the same time, destroying their own country, identified bad leadership as yet a major reason for the socio-economic challenges facing Nigeria.
“If you get a good leadership that links with the people and tries to talk with the people; not talking on top of the people, then we would be okay.”
“I have started visualising a good Nigerian leader. That is, a person, who travels across the country and has a friend virtually everywhere he travels to and he knows at least one person that he can communicate with.”
“That is a person, who is very versed in economics and is also a good politician, who should be able to talk to Nigerians and so on. I have seen one, or two or three of such persons already in his sixties,” he added.
