MKO Abiola’s daughter says Yahaya Bello is best candidate for youth vote

The daughter of late MKO Abiola, winner of Nigeria’s 1993 elections, Hafsat Abiola-Costello has stated that no candidate is best positioned to lead the youth vote in Nigeria than Yahaya Bello.

Abiola-Costello who is the Director-General of Hope ’23 Yahaya Bello Campaign Council stated this in an interview on Tuesday in Abuja, according to the News Agency of Nigeria.

She added that under Yahaya’s term as Kogi State Governor, the state’s IGR grew from N350 million, to N2 billion.

She revealed that the people that are truly marginalised in Nigeria are the women and the young people. And, if there is any moral obligation, it is to them that it is owed.

• She said, “Who led the fight against June 12, against the annulment? Was it not the students, the young people? Where were they in 1999 after the whole fight, where were they placed, can we say nowhere?
• “When I look at all these events, the kidnappings and all now, it is clear to me that this is a revolt of young people of Nigeria, that they have had enough.
• “Many of them are revolting in ways that we do not endorse because they have had enough of being marginalized in their own country.
• “If the country will not use them for good, they will use themselves for bad.” 
• She disclosed that Bello is for the youth vote as he has signaled to the youths that “Nigeria is for them, that they are the ones that should be in charge and young people and women in Nigeria are ready to lead.”
• She also added that Yahaya Bello is an accountant, and one of the few state governors in Nigeria that the World Bank has certified his transparency in finances.
• “I do not know any other state that the World Bank has given his ranking.
• “So, we can safely say that if this kind of international agency has evaluated him, the work of the state in the management of resources and not found it to be wanting.
• “It means that there is really no credibility to the idea that he is mismanaging the state,” she said.

On State IGR she said “When he came on board, it was N350 million, he has built it to N2billion. And his own intention is to build the capacity of the state to grow wealth,” citing that he led business development into Kogi state by attracting to the state Confluence Rice, and other significant investment he has been making in the Rice Value Chain.

“He understands that one of the big assets in the state is agriculture. But he does not want us to just be restricted to farming but to look also at the value addition in farming. So significant resources in the state have been invested in that regard.”

Governor Yahaya Bello became the first APC presidential aspirant to pay N100 million nomination fee.