Why I Want To Be APC National Chair - Ebri

Former Cross River Governor, Chief Clement Ebri

Former Governor of Cross River State, Chief Clement Ebri has said that his aspiration to serve his party, the All Progressive Congress (APC) as National Chairman is to protect youths from what he suffered when he contested governorship election as a youth.

Ebri who stated this during a media parley with members of Association of Cross River State Online Journalists (ACROJ) in Calabar recently said that Nigerian youths are blessed with great potentials that should be part of critical decision making in the country.

The APC stalwart said that he suffered attacks and all kinds of blackmail when he declared his intention to run the governorship election in the second republic at the age of just 39.

He promised that if elected Chairman, he will give the youths level playing ground and equal opportunities to aspire into elective positions through the ranks of APC.

Ebri, an economist and a former national chairman of PPA said that if he becomes the Chairman, he will strive to distill significance difference in leadership which will in turn give birth to a national blue print that will bring development to every facet of the nation's economy.

According to him, “Ours an evolution democracy and even the Nigerian Constitution has not clearly defined our ideology. We will say, we have a mixed economy, public enterprises, striving with private and merging into mixed economy and government involvement in social safety programmes empowerment and in others words, APC, as a party is progressive with sympathy for the down-trodden and to be categorised as left of centre.

I still believe that, much is to be done with a dividing line to distinguish one from the other and I have been thinking as National Chairman, to distill a significance difference in leadership, to bring to the fore, a national blue print for sustainable development, in every facet of our national life and given Nigerians, a sense of belonging.

We have all been involved in what I call, spasms of mass interest, either positive or negative, without a base for sustainability, but only contiguous enthusiasms.”

While noting that he was not desperate for the position, he maintained that "As a believer of transparency, justice and equity, I will not want to cut corners or short change any party member and by extension, any Nigerian in my capacity as National Chairman. I will organise credible elections across board with all integrity.

Speaking about the economy he said that "as an economist, the present administration took over an economy headed for recession, hence, the failure to save during oil prices boom and under this situation, economy is no magic and given the circumstances and all things being equal. APC, under President Buhari, was able to arrest the drift, and the fast declining rate.

And the fact that, so much money was taken out of the economy by Government officials was another grievous consequence that if, such trend was allowed to continue, they wouldn’t have been a Nigeria left.

Therefore, we must look holistically from this perspective to be able to access the pragmatic approach deployed by the Buhari’s Administration, to get us out of the doldrums. It was a situation of an interrupted descend into the abyss.”