Olawepo-Hashim is Presidential Candidate for NIM, PT, ANN, Others

The National Intervention Movement (NIM), the People’s Trust (PT), and the Alliance for New Nigeria (ANN) have jointly settled for Mr. Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim as their presidential candidate.

The parties had at the Lagos Convention of the PT agreed to jointly back Olawepo-Hashim after a scion of the Awolowo dynasty and PT presidential aspirant, Lady Olufunke Awolowo stepped down for Olawepo-Hashim.

Explaining why the groups adopted Olawepo-Hashim, National Secretary of People’s Trust and Deputy Director General of the National Intervention Movement (NIM), Mallam Nasir Kura said Olawepo-Hashim’s integrity, history of struggle for democracy, a combination of business and political experience put him ahead. “And more importantly for us from the civil society, OlawepoHashim is our own man”, the party leader added.

Regarded as a “political general” by some of his colleagues, Kura stressed that OlawepoHashim has a good record of political struggle. “He was one of the prominent leaders of the two weeks anti-SAP uprising against the military government in 1989. He has also led an international campaign against the military government from his base in Ghana in May 1989, from where he moved to Europe and Asia”

Besides, “he was guest at the 13th festival of youth and students in Pyongyang, North Korea in 1989, where he accompanied the South Korean student leader Rim Su Young in a solidarity march at the Demilitarized Military Zone between the borders of North and South Korea”

Olawepo-Hashim rejected the asylum offer to stay in Europe. He returned to Nigeria in 1989 to continue the struggle. He was detained under the Detention of Person’s Decree 2 of 1989 under solitary confinement. He was Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience for Nigeria same year.

A businessman with interest in the energy sector, he was one of the first generation of activists that went into mega business and partisan politics. He was the first elected deputy national publicity secretary of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in 1999. He resigned from the PDP in 2006 citing ideological disagreements.

Olawepo-Hashim is seen as a bridge builder and as a complete Nigerian that will help in building consensus at a time of great division. Born of a Yoruba mother and a Hausa father from Kebbi State, he is a Christian, raised in Niger and Kwara States. Olawepo-Hashim, 49, is seen as bridge between the older and the younger generation in Nigeria