The presidential candidate of the
Allied Congress Party of Nigeria, ACPN, Oby Ezekwesili, on Monday declared that
the political influence of a national leader of the All Progressives Congress,
APC, Bola Tinubu was “overestimated.”
She anchored her assertion on the
inability of Tinubu to control the biggest Local Government Area in Lagos
State, Alimosho.
Ezekwesili, a former minister of
Education, said President Muhammadu Buhari and the All Progressives Congress,
APC, could only get 86,897 votes from Alimosho with a population of 1.2million.
She said the number of votes
Buhari got from the local government in 2015 was an indication that Tinubu’s
political power was over hyped.
This was contained in a statement
Ezekwesili signed, and it reads, “The most
recurring question that have come up since I decided to contest the position of
the president of Nigeria has been the issue of structure.
“I hear it all the time
everywhere I go, from family, from friends, on the Internet and offline, in
hushed whispers and in the worried voices of people who express their fears to
me personally.
“How is she going to win? Does
her party have the reach or the structure to go all the way and carry the day
eventually?
“But you see, these questions,
while valid, all come from a place of trepidation. Trepidation at how truly
powerful the office of a citizen is and the possibilities that can happen when
this power is unleashed. The truth is that you, my fellow citizens, are all the
structure that we need to make this happen and this isn’t some lofty ideal. It
is very possible through difficult but practical steps.
“Let us look at the data. Data is
something these old order politicians who want to rule forever haven’t bothered
to engage with. Alimosho for example, is the largest local government in Lagos
state with over 1.2million persons resident according to official census
figures.
“In 2015, only about 650,000 of
these people registered and obtained their Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs). Faced
with the rather unattractive choice of voting for the Peoples Democratic Party
(PDP)’s Goodluck Jonathan, or the anyone-but-Jonathan candidacy represented by
Muhammadu Buhari, a great many voters chose to abstain.
“At the end of the day, the
#APCPDP, the twin terrors of Nigeria, only managed to conjure up 140,000 votes
between them. In Almighty Alimosho. This says something loud and clear, that
Asiwaju Bola Tinubu with all of his ‘might’ and experience in so-called
grassroots politics could, at the end of the day, deliver only 86,897 votes for
his candidate Buhari and their party.
“Where then does the source of
this his widely reported power come from? Isn’t he grossly overestimated?
Asiwaju Tinubu and his like in #APCPDP control only as much as we let them. And
the situation is the same in every other part of the country- from Kano to
Ilorin- where any godfather claims to hold sway.
“These men are only as powerful
as we, the citizens let them be. They have been getting away with this for so
long because we outsourced our responsibility as voters to people who do not
necessarily represent our best interests.
“The biggest trick that these
entrenched politicians have played on us is to convince us of their
invincibility, and we permitted them. This stops NOW!
“The data shows otherwise. The
500,000 persons in Alimosho who were so unimpressed by the #APCPDP that they
refused to come out to vote are the numbers who will probably decide the 2019
elections. They are the numbers my campaign is seeking to activate. Everyone
has one vote only and we would work hard to earn the votes of these Nigerians
who care enough about their country to be wary of giving their votes to a bunch
of self-preserving and recycled polo-trickians who have had several years to
deliver dividends to the people but failed woefully.
“The #APCPDP and the revolving
door of politicians that they represent sell us lies of invincibility to
convince us to remain bystanders in our most important civic duty. They want us
to remain at home, disinterested and disillusioned while they pillage the
country and loot our resources. No more.”
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