Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the presidential candidate for the ruling All Progressives Congress APC, responded by calling former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s endorsement of Mr. Peter Obi of the Labour Party LP “worthless.”
However, Tinubu acknowledged that the previous president had every democratic right to support anyone in a preliminary response to the news.
The APC standard bearer claimed that no one could count on Obasanjo’s backing to be governor or councillor, not even in his native state of Ogun, where the former president’s adopted candidates had previously lost elections.
Tinubu and his own former deputy, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), were criticized by Obasanjo in a greeting to Nigerian youths on the first day of the year, saying that only Obi holds a promise for the nation.
“Let me say straight away that ‘Emi Lokan’ (My turn) and ‘I have paid my dues are one and the same thing and are wrong attitudes and mentality for the leadership of Nigeria now. They cannot form the new pedestal to reinvent and invest in a new Nigeria based on an All-Nigeria Government for the liberation and restoration of Nigeria. Such a government must have representation from all sectors of our national life public, private, civil society, professional, labour, employers, and the diaspora. The solution should be in we’ and ‘us’ and not in ‘me’ and ‘I”, the former president had said.
In a statement sent by Mr. Bayo Onanuga, Director of Media and Publicity for the APC Presidential Campaign Council, Tinubu stated that he was reacting to the situation in response to several requests from journalists demanding his reply.
The council expressed sorrow for Mr. Obi, who it claimed is on his way to joining the long list of losers sponsored by Obasanjo in the past, and observed that the former president has a history of unsuccessful endorsements.