More than 2,500 grassroots canvassers were inaugurated in Kwara State
on Friday to engage in massive mobilisation of people from all the
wards and polling units in the state to ensure victory for the All
Progressives Congress (APC) at all levels in this year’s general
elections.
“These canvassers will be our victory army, the army that will
dismantle the gargantuan edifice of corruption and misgovernance that
has held our dear state down for too long,” the Minister of
Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, who is also the leader
of the party in the state, said at the inauguration of the canvassers
at the Buhari/Osinbajo Project 2019 Office in Ilorin.
”This unprecedented move is our most potent weapon against the
enemies of the state and the oppressors of the people,” he said.
Mohammed said the ‘well-recruited, tested and trusted
canvassers’ will go from house to house in each of the 1,872 polling
units in the state to tell the people why they must vote for President
Muhammadu Buhari and all the candidates of the APC in Kwara State in
the 2019 general elections.
“Gathered here today are 1,872 canvassers representing the 18,720
canvasses. That is one canvasser per each polling unit across the 193
wards in Kwara State. We are also inaugurating today 193 ward
coordinators, 193 ward secretaries, 193 ward women leaders and 193
ward youth leaders,” he said.
The Minister said the stellar performance of President Buhari in
reinventing governance and his pro-poor policies have made the job of
the canvassers much easier.
“To the canvassers, if they ask you why President Buhari deserves a
second term, tell them it is because he has leveraged his legendary
integrity and acclaimed management of resources, human and material,
to reinvent governance and make a difference in the lives of
Nigerians. Therefore, he needs another four years to consolidate his
great achievements,” he said.
Mohammed then went ahead to reel out the Administration’s
achievements, starting with the Social Investment Programme (SIP)
which, he said, is benefiting a total of 10 million people directly
nationwide.
He said the Buhari Administration is feeding 9.3 million pupils in
45,394 schools in 26 states and employing 100,000 cooks under the Home
Grown School Feeding Programme; that the Administration is paying
conditional cash transfer of N5,000 monthly to about 300,000 most
vulnerable households and that over 1.5 million people nationwide have
benefited from the interest-free loans to petty traders under the
TraderMoni Scheme.
“The Administration has retaken every inch of Nigeria’s territory from
insurgents, flushed them out of their safe havens and put them on the
run. Road projects are ongoing across every state of the country,
turning the country into one huge construction site. Kwara is a
beneficiary, as those who have travelled on the Ilorin-Jebba-Mokwa and
the Ajase-Ipo-Offa road can testify,” the Minister said.
Mohammed used the occasion to assure all the APC candidates for
this year’s elections that the recent court judgment in respect of the
state executive council of the party has not affected the validity of
their candidature.
”They remain the authentic candidates of our great party and should
go about their campaigns without any fear of being disqualified,” he
said.
In his remark, the Minister of Transportation, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi,
said the 2019 general election represents the struggle by the poor in
Nigeria to take back the country from the rich.
He commended the people of Kwara for kick-starting the political
revolution that will dismantle the self-serving structures of the rich
in the country.
“What you are seeing is the modern day Tunisia. You know the Arab
Spring started from Tunisia, when a poor man just set himself on fire
and the revolution started all over the country. Today, Kwara is
leading the revolution to change Nigeria. Power must return to the
people.
“We are gathered here today to peacefully take back power from the
rich and handover to the poor. That’s what APC stands for,” he said.
He charged the people to rise up and defend the APC from the gang-up
by the elite, who will always prefer to hold down the poor from
attaining self-fulfillment in life.
