Pastor of the Household of God Church International Ministries, Chis Okotie, has declared his intention to run for 2019 presidential elections.
Okotie, who has made three failed attempts – 2003, 2007 and 2011 – to become the President, made the declaration during the Sunday service in his church in the Oregun area of Lagos.
Speaking during the church service, he said he had written to the national chairmen of All Progressive Congress (APC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), urging them not to field any presidential candidate for next year’s general elections but to adopt him as a consensus presidential candidate.
He said: “Some days ago, I wrote a letter to the chairmanship of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Adams Oshiomhole and Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Uche Secondus, asking them not to field any Presidential candidate, that they should adopt me.”
The Cleric urged APC and PDP to support his proposed “Government of National Reconciliation and Reconstruction” adding that divisiveness and religious fundamentalism will not threaten the existence of Nigeria in his administration.
“I have re-emerged from my political hibernation to contest the office of President in the forthcoming elections. I am fully persuaded that Nigeria needs a man who is credible, dependable and trustworthy.
“A God-fearing man who is embroidered with compassion and love for (this) country. A man who will be readily accepted as a symbol of national unity, who can bring genuine reconciliation and guarantee peace and tranquillity in our nation.
“A man who is completely insulated from the variegated conflicts that mark the antecedents of our major political actors. A man who can apply the principle of malice towards none and charity for all; who can invoke a pan-Nigerian philosophy to reject the partisan provincialism of finger pointing at this time when Nigeria is threatened by existential adversaries.
“A man with the requisite intellectual capacity and moral perpendicularity. I believe that the benevolent grace of God has telescoped these virtues into my person, to prepare for such a time as this,” Okotie said.
Okotie said his mandate this time around was to set up an interim government, which he had named “Government of National Reconciliation and Reconstruction,” that will birth a new Nigeria.
“Nigeria is in dire need of restructuring. Our federalism is simply terminological inexactitude. It is a realistic piece of fakery. The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is obsolete, retrogressive and subversive to the Nigerian cause.
“It can no longer subsist as a legal protocol to guarantee the peaceful coexistence of autonomous ethnicities. No extant or subsisting government can right these aberrations, for obvious reasons of parochial party considerations and entrenched partisan rivalries within the polity,” he added.
