Ahead of 2019 General Elections, Pastor turned politician, Revd Chris Okotie, on Saturday emerged the presidential standard bearer of the Fresh Democratic Party (FDP), urging both the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to boldly come out to endorse him as the next president of Nigeria and support his plan to set up an interim government.

He said the interim government should be one whose mandate would be to resolve all the perennial structural and socio-economic problems plaguing the nation.

Okotie emerged in the direct primary exercise which took place at the Lagos Country Club in Ikeja and attended by hundreds of party delegates nationwide.

Seven governorship candidates of the party from Jigawa, Ogun, Kano, Plateau, Katsina, Imo and Akwa –Ibom states were also in attendance

Revd. Okotie was nominated unopposed after his only challenger, James Pam from Plateau State stepped down for him.

INEC officials, Mr Adekunle Ogunmola, who is the Resident Electoral Commissioner in charge of Ogun, Lagos and Ondo, and Mrs Nkechi Abu, were on ground to monitor the exercise, which went without hitches.

The fresh presidential candidate was later formally handed over the party flags, just as the party governorship candidates also received theirs.

Speaking further, while delivering his acceptance speech, Okotie made it known that what he was demanding of APC and PDP was already contained in recent letters he wrote to their leadership, saying an interim government of National Reconciliation and Reconstruction was the most realistic way to re-engineer the political system and give the country a new direction..

Okotie, who said he was not out to condemn other political actors but expressed the need for a paradigm shift in the governing process if the country was to make a headway.

According to him, a home-grown initiative, called Aboriginal democracy, could bring permanent peace to the country, just as he reiterated his long-held view that only a properly restructured Nigeria under a focused, God-fearing leader could take her to the promised land.

Quoting extensively from his letters to the APC and PDP, Rev Chris Okotie said with his nomination as the flag bearer of the Fresh Democratic Party (FDP), the two top parties should boldly come out to endorse him as the next President of Nigeria and support his plan to set up an interim government whose mandate would be to resolve all the perennial structural and socio-economic problems plaguing the nation.

•Excerpted from a Tribune report