SAN FRANCISCO, July 16, (THEWILL) – Nigerian televangelist and the pastor of the Household of God Church International Ministries, Chris Okotie, has declared his intention to run for the 2019 presidential election.
Okotie, who has made three failed attempts – 2003, 2007 and 2011 – to become the President, made the declaration during the Sunday service in his church in the Oregun area of Lagos.
He told the congregation that he had re-emerged from his political hibernation, based on his conviction that Nigeria needed a credible, dependable and a trustworthy man to lead.
The cleric, who is the President of Fresh Democratic Party, on which platform he ran for the Presidency and lost in 2011, said his mandate this time round was to set up an interim government, which he had named “Government of National Reconciliation and Reconstruction,” that would birth a new Nigeria.
He revealed that he had written to the leaders of the two major political parties saying he should be adopted as their candidate.
“Some days ago, I wrote a letter to the Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Adams Oshiomhole, and of the Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP), Uche Secondus, asking them not to field any Presidential candidate, that they should adopt me,” he said.
“Nigeria is a crying nation that need liberation. The solution to Nigeria’s problem does not lies on APC or PDP.
“This is the beginning of the completely turnaround of our nation.
“I have re-emerged from my political hibernation to contest the office of President in the forthcoming elections. I am fully persuaded that Nigeria needs a man who is credible, dependable and trustworthy.
“A God-fearing man who is embroidered with compassion and love for (this) country. A man who will be readily accepted as a symbol of national unity, who can bring genuine reconciliation and guarantee peace and tranquillity in our nation.
“A man who is completely insulated from the variegated conflicts that mark the antecedents of our major political actors. A man who can apply the principle of malice towards none and charity for all; who can invoke a pan-Nigerian philosophy to reject the partisan provincialism of finger pointing at this time when Nigeria is threatened by existential adversaries.
“A man with the requisite intellectual capacity and moral perpendicularity. I believe that the benevolent grace of God has telescoped these virtues into my person, to prepare for such a time as this.
“Nigeria is in dire need of restructuring. Our federalism is simply terminological inexactitude. It is a realistic piece of fakery. The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is obsolete, retrogressive and subversive to the Nigerian cause.
“It can no longer subsist as a legal protocol to guarantee the peaceful coexistence of autonomous ethnicities. No extant or subsisting government can right these aberrations, for obvious reasons of parochial party considerations and entrenched partisan rivalries within the polity.”
