RIMI'S DEATH, A GREAT LOSS TO OBJECTIVE CRITICISM – EMORDI
Senator Joy Emordi has decried the death of former Kano State Governor, Alhaji Abubakar Rimi, as a great loss to Nigeria and her political development. Emordi, whose election was nullifed by the Court of Appeal, Enugu recently, also said that Rimi's death was a loss to objective criticism, honesty and genuineness in describing issues.
She decried increasing insecurity in the country and called for reduction of the seven-point agenda of the Federal Government to three; security, power and education.
The senator, who represented Anambra North Senatorial District before the judgement of the appellate court, told Daily Sun that Rimi's death was a monumental loss to Nigeria.
She said, 'Well, that was a great loss to Nigeria, great loss to our political development, great loss to objective criticism, great loss to honesty and genuineness in describing issues. Rimi was one man that will always tell you how anything was. He read International Relations but fortunately, he was not diplomatic as to paint any dark issue white.
'Alhaji Abubakar Rimi was a family friend, very unassuming person irrespective of what he achieved in life. He was able to identify with everybody irrespective of your class in the society and he stood for what was right, he stood for the defence of the less privileged. He stood for the defence of the oppressed, he was one man who believed in some of us when we were all in Social Democratic Party (SDP), he was there and was giving listening ear to many of us.
'I could remember when he was minister of communication; he was able to render help to a lot of people without thinking about himself unlike what was operative in Nigeria. He served the country, touched lives of ordinary people without talking about himself. So that was a monumental loss to Nigeria. A very colourful politicians, it's a pity that he is no more.'
Identifying insecurity as the bane of development and investment in the country, Emordi noted that Nigeria had lost many of her beautiful souls to either armed robbery or assassinations.
'I think the bane of Nigeria society, the bane of development in this country today, the bane of discouraging investment in Nigeria today is nothing but insecurity. That is one area I will urge our government to look into, put in everything to see that we sort out the security situation in this country.
'We've lost our beautiful ones, we've lost our fathers, our mothers, our nationalists to the scourge of armed robbery. Look at Bola Ige, he was murdered just like that; still out of insecurity, and many other people. Look at our own dear Alhaji Rimi just died like that because of armed robbery. The level of insecurity in the country today is alarming and it doesn't talk well of Nigeria. But let's see what happens, once the budget is released. I know the government is going to go into action.'
The senator insisted that if the seven-point agenda was reduced to three, it would be easy to achieve reasonably and would in turn deal with the issue of unemployment that had messed up the country.
She said, 'That's why I have been agitating for the reduction of our seven-point agenda to three-point agenda. One, security; two, power; three, education, we have to do all these things in order to solve the major problems afflicting this country today which is that of unemployment.
'Without security, without power, without education, we are not going to be able to solve the problem of unemployment and so many other problems affecting our country. So, we have to reduce the agenda to three.'