Tinubu 2023: Opposition’s Intellectual Lassitude, Propaganda and Disinformation By Daniel A. Noah Osa-Ogbegie

Tinubu 2023: Opposition’s Intellectual Lassitude, Propaganda and Disinformation
By Daniel A. Noah Osa-Ogbegie

POLITICS DIGEST – The candidate of the All Progressives Congress ( APC) recently addressed a group of intellectuals and policy analysts at the Royal Institute of International Affairs
, otherwise known as Chatham House, London and it was another big revelation of Candidate Bola Ahmed Tinubu on one hand and opposition supporting southern Nigerians on the other.

I woke up early this morning to the cries of certain Nigerians on how embarrassed they were at Tinubu’s outing at Chatham House and I was compelled to see a video of the speech for confirmation. I saw the full video and all I could see was a highly Presidential delivery of a man who understood what was expected of him as the next President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, appreciating the relevance of Nigeria and how to properly situate it to benefit everyone connected to it.

Tinubu in his speech, emphasised Nigeria’s role in Africa as a big brother and a beacon of hope to the continent and the ECOWAS sub-region through now entrenched democratic ideals, having run an unbroken democracy for over two decades.

He said when he becomes Nigeria’s president, his administration will continue to provide quality leadership to the sub-region, to ensure democratic ideals reign in nations of the ECOWAS region.

Bola Tinubu went on to talk about security, energy, private sector participation and engagements and generally building a virile Nigeria that will provide leadership for the African rennaisance. It was a beautiful speech any sincere Nigerian ought to be proud of.

During the questions and answers session, Tinubu again showed his mettle by the dignified way he handled some insolent questions that would have made a Peter Obi flip as he did with a certain Dino Melaye and the other cretin, Reno Omokri. He was asked the vexing question about his true identity, age and health, facts already on the public domain.

Tinubu is 70 years now and will be 71 when he becomes President of Nigeria, by the grace of God; why is his age suddenly an issue this year when it was not an issue in 1992 when he contested for the senate and won? Why was it not an issue when he sided with the Nigerian people to fight for the restoration of democracy and freedom in Nigeria when we were led by jackboot dictators who held us by the scruff of the neck as they sent our finests from one gulag to the other? Why was Tinubu’s age not debated in 1998/1999 when he won election as Lagos State Governor and started a reform that has now put Lagos on the map as a centre of excellence, making several men and women in the process? Why was his age not an issue when he staved off Obasanjo’s dictatorship and came out as the last man standing, rescuing Nigeria from the rudderless PDP Government and making the opposition to win National election for the first time in not just Nigeria but in Africa?

A basis for opposing elements questioning Tinubu’s age is because of their belief in the silly propaganda that Tinubu’s daughter is 62. I don’t blame them much because I also believed same at some point until I did my findings to discover that the woman was actually a very young woman in her mid 40s. She celebrated her 46th year birthday June this year. Go and check her picture to see that she even looks less than 40. My friend Darlington Okpebholo Ray , a PDP member and Obi supporter knows her very well and can attest to this.

So instead of discussing the speech at Chatham House as intelligent people would do, the naysayers opposition elements, as usual were crying about how Chatham House was imposing “a sick Tinubu on Nigeria” ( per Sowore’s Sahara Reporters)and how Tinubu allocated questions to his team members to answer ( per Dino Melaye and Peter Obi social media urchins).

You have to agree with me that Nigeria has the most mischievous and intellectually lazy opposition in the world . They can hardly read anything beyond thirty lines and do not care about interrogating anything that does not massage their oversized egos.

Ten questions were put to Tinubu after his speech and in his characteristic way of showing the Presidency would not just be about him but about the first class team he would put together, he directly answered four of the ten questions and parried the six other questions to his team members who included Nasiru El-Rufai, a first class brain who completely turned Abuja around and made it a world class City, Ben Ayade, a renowned Professor and Governor of Cross Rivers State, Dave Umahi, an engineer and Governor of Ebonyi State, who turned a hitherto unheralded Ebonyi to a major talking point in Nigeria because of his unparalleled development strides. There was also Dele Alake, a long time confidant and associate of Bola Tinubu, who is a veteran journalist and strategist.

The traction Tinubu would get from delegating some of the questions to members of his team is enormous and I’m sure the other candidates know this and would most probably copy the innovation. It shows that Tinubu would rely on these highly skilled and other Nigerians to get the job done, the way he did in lagos State. It would also reinvigorate his team members to redouble their efforts to deliver their respective spheres to tinubu as they feel part and parcel of the Tinubu project. Tinubu is not one to pretend about being some messiah like Peter Obi and Atiku do. He recognises his limitation and sharpens his area of strenght for the general good of the Country.

I say this to you all today, the choice in 2023 must not be emotive. We must go beyond emotions to assess all the candidates and choose the one that has the track record required to get this Country out of the woods and place it on a pedester of holistic progress.

We must look at the records of the front line candidates and see how they have been doing what they claim they will do as President.

We need a detribalised Nigerian who sees every Nigerian as his own, not minding their ethnic groupings, religious beliefs, class and creed.

That President is not Peter Obi, who showed that he’s clannish by driving a wedge between Catholics and Anglicans in Anambra and causing schisms between them.

It is also not Atiku Abubakar, who has clearly shown he’s a divisive character in the way he sided with those who killed that Benue girl in Sokoto.

If Obasanjo’s various complains about Atiku are anything to go by, Atiku was a wrong choice for him and for anyone else. He’s untrustworthy, callous and extremely corrupt. Please read an excerpt from MY WATCH, a book written by Obasanjo where he gave us strong insights into the person of Atiku Abubakar:

“What I did not know, which came out glaringly later, was his parental background which was somewhat shadowy, his propensity to corruption, his tendency to disloyalty, his inability to say and stick to the truth all the time,a propensity for poor judgment, his belief and reliance on marabouts , his lack of transparency, his trust in money to buy his way out on all issues and his readiness to sacrifice morality, integrity, propriety truth and national interest for self and selfish interest”
Olusegun Obasanjo
MY WATCH
Volume 2
Pages 31- 32

The Above is Atiku disected by Obasanjo as someone who was a VP under him. Obasanjo knew him well enough to have described him this way.

Such a man as described by Obasanjo should be kept far away from our highest seat, very far from our common partrimony and not tossed on it for any reason whatsoever.

Nothing has changed with Atiku. He is still the same desperate Atiku as before. He has changed political parties more than a Prostitute changes sex partners. His looting tendencies have also not changed in any way. He claims to be the highest employer of labour in Nigeria after the federal government, yet he hustled for his daughter to go through the back door to get a Central Bank of Nigeria job few years ago, without regards to Nigerians who have no one to speak for them.

Atiku Abubakar has contested for every Presidential election since 1993, 30 years ago by next year when the Presidential election holds. I was in SS2 then going to SS 3, at age 15 to 16. Today, wobbling from Dubai, where he lives, to Nigeria, where he wants to satisfy his long held hedonistic desire to be President, Atiku seeks to break the Nigerian spirit of creating a balance in a multi ethnic entity by rotating power between North and South

While Bola Tinubu created a world class civil service in Lagos and employed Nigerians from diverse religions and tribes to work in the Lagos Civil service, Peter Obi was repatriating Northerners living in Anambra to their States and sacking fellow Igbos from other South east States like Imo and Enugu working in the Anambra civil service.

If Peter Obi can discriminate against Anambra Anglicans in favour of Anambra Catholics; if Peter Obi can discriminate against Imo indigenes working in Anambra, and retrench them, how can he handle a combustive, multi heterogeneous entity like Nigeria, as president?

Tinubu’s record of performance in Lagos, is without question, an example to State Governors in Nigeria. He implemented a land administration system reform in Lagos to make housing development and ownership easier, embarked on holistic judicial system and legal proceeding ( criminal and civil) reforms , went on a tax system reform to make it at par with international best practice.

He didn’t just stop at the above mentioned reforms, he also embarked on the traffic management reform which was improved on by successive governments he helped put in place.

In addition to the above institutional reforms were also the reform in education. Tinubu, a muslim , was the first Governor in this Republic to return mission schools to the original owners and also started the payment of O’level enrolment fees for all candidates in Lagos schools, irrespective of their States of origin. Whereas Peter Obi increased school fees in all Anambra schools,including secondary schools and compelled parents to pay three term school fees in the first term. When students and parents protested, Peter obi infamously retorted that education was not for the poor, that they could withdraw from schools and go on to learn vulcanizing or carpentry or any other trade; that they didn’t have to get formal education. Peter Obi was brutal to Anambra people and it is the reason they have been rejecting his candidates since the end of his tenures as Governor.

All these institutional reforms Tinubu implemented and institutionalised in Lagos have greatly impacted on the ease of doing business in Lagos and reason why Lagos is the 5th largest economy in Africa today.

Every State in Nigeria and even the federal government have copied from Tinubu’s Lagos in the last 22 years. I challenge all Peter Obi supporters: home and abroad to tell me just one reform, policy, programme and project of Peter Obi that other States copied from. I have been throwing this challenge since June this year and till date, nobody has come up with anything. So what is now the basis of supporting Peter Obi? It is not even as though the man is an orator. One can hardly make sense of what he says. It is not because he throws out spittles when he talks, but because he essentially says nothing beyond enumerating the problems of Nigeria without talking about the solutions.

We can not continue to be emotive in deciding who governs us. No messiah is coming to take all the problems away. Tinubu does not claim to be the messiah. What he knows, is what we also know about him: that he has the capacity to put a team of egg heads from all over the country together for the general good. He has been doing it and the evidence is there. He can do it again, this time, with Nigeria.

DAN Osa-Ogbegie writes from Benin City, Nigeria. [email protected]