MEET FRANK OSHANUGOR
By Frank Oshanugor
As Nigeria’s political space begins to heat up preparatory to the 2023 general elections, a new political pressure group named The True Democrats (TTD) has emerged with promises to bring a people friendly and all inclusive positive changes in the nation’s electoral processes.
Worried by the spate of anti progressive tendencies that have continued to characterise our polity over the years with respect to participation in the electoral process, the TTD said, with its emergence, efforts are being made to win no fewer than 25 million Nigerians to support its activities geared towards making aspirations for elective office as cheap as possible.
In what looks like the organization’s mission statement issued by its National Secretary Mr. Ben Onwionoko on Tuesday (a copy of which was made available to AtlanticNewsonline), TTD said among other things, that it is poised towards making elections and voting cheap, ensuring that campaign is cheap, ensuring that one’s vote counts and ultimately resulting in cheap
governance.
The TTD also believes that it is politically possible to ensure that godfatherism is totally eliminated from Nigeria’s political space. This, it has promised to pursue just as efforts are being made to reduce the spate of killings and other vices during electioneering campaigns and actual voting. It has promised also to stop the culture of underage voting and declaration of fake results.
The TTD noted that killings during elections, declaration of fake results “have taken away greater values from a nation known to be very peaceful.”
Meanwhile, the group’s Board of Trustees and the National Working Committee have approved the appointment of Mr. Obazei Christopher-Maria Chinyelum as TTD Delta State Chairman, Dr. Tom Kela Ejembi as the Director General TTD Focus group and Mr. Bernett Anthony Usanga as the Ambassador OG-07 Ogun State.
Other appointees are Mr. Samuel Okonji as Ambassador LS-07 Lagos State, Mrs. Becky Ijeh as the TTD National Woman leader and Miss Uthman Hameedat as the Deputy National Woman leader.
AtlanticNewsonline investigation revealed that convener of The True Democrats is an Abuja based political scientist and activist, Mr. Bob Ofunne who hails from Ubulu-Uku in Delta State.
The core values of founding TTD among other things, centres around creating a new political and sustainable awareness, bringing nationalistic values and leadership that will foster unity, equality, security, development, justice and rule of law where no one is above the law.