Utomi Seeks New Movement to Rescue Nigeria from Collapse

Nigeria’s leading political economist, Prof Pat Utomi yesterday explained the need to build a new national political movement to rescue Nigeria and address burning issues that put its corporate existence under threat.

Utomi, founder of the Centre for Value in Leadership (CVL), therefore defended the National Consultative Front (NCF) unveiled in Abuja last week to mobilise Nigerians for a popular mass action towards constitutional reforms.

He canvassed a new political movement in a statement he issued in defence of the NCF, citing fundamental national challenges that should unite leaders and patriots together to rescue the country from the brink of failure.

Ahead of the 2023 general election, a meeting of prominent Nigerian activists, academics, and other professionals announced the creation of the NCF, a new political movement to pursue constitutional reforms that are citizen-driven and process-led in engendering a new peoples’ constitution.

After the meeting, a communique was issued listing a former President of Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Dr. Olisa Agbakoba (SAN); Nigeria’s leading human rights lawyer, Femi Falana (SAN); a former military administrator of Kaduna State Col. Abubakar Umar and Senator Shehu Sani, among others, as part of the new movement.

But Agbakoba, Falana, Sani and Umar had dissociated themselves from the new political movement, claiming that they were not part of the meeting where the communique was issued and were not consulted before its establishment.