For many years Oby Ezekwesili was known in government circles as “Madam Due Process”, a nickname acquired when she was the head of Budget Monitoring and Price Intelligence Unit under President Obasanjo. Her fervour is doing the right thing gave her another opportunity to serve as Minister after which she moved on as Vice President of World Bank.
It was her advocacy for the kidnapped students of Government Secondary School, Chibok in 2014 that took her from the corridors of power into the hearts of many Nigerians. Her relentless demand that the girls be found has drawn criticism for many who took her advocacy for a campaign against the former president, Goodluck Jonathan. However, the successive government under President Muhammad Buhari has not found it easy either, as she has remained a fierce social activist and criticised his policies repeatedly.
Recently, she announced that she was seeking elective office as the president of Nigeria, come 2019. She sat down for an exclusive interview with Neusroom where she bared her mind of a wide range of issues, including her childhood that was interrupted by the Nigerian Civil War, her career, social advocacy and why she’s confident of winning the 2019 general elections.
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“I am confident of the victory of the Nigerian people. It’s not really about me being victorious, it’s the Nigerian people. I am confident that from what I see clearly, there are many Nigerians who have moved away from the hopelessness that says ‘what can we do?’ to becoming people who are saying ‘but wait a minute, there is something we can do’. Democracy gives us the legitimacy to do a lot. The fact that I have the power to vote means that if we defined what kind of Nigeria we want and we find someone who reflects the thought of what kind of a nation we should build if we all worked together we could actually get that nation”, she said.
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