Progressive Nigerians, especially the youths are massively rooting for the presidential candidate of the Labour Party to take over the baton of leadership from President Mohammadu Buhari come 2023. The major reason for this is that the gravest problem facing Nigeria currently is corruption and there is this belief that amongst the three leading presidential candidates in the country (Atiku, Tinubu and Obi) Peter Obi is the ONLY one without any corruption allegations hanging on over his head. Record shows that among the three contestants, Peter Obi is the only presidential hopeful that didn’t enrich himself with public funds whilst in office. While Tinubu left over N100 billion in debts for Fashola, Obi left N75 billion naira in savings for Obiano.
Let us not forget that Lagos being the former capital of Nigeria with concentration of seaports, international airports and headquarters of most of the multinationals, ordinarily should have higher Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) than Anambra State. However, with limited resources at his disposal, Obi was able to sanitize and redefine governance in Anambra State, and still left assets for his successor while his counterpart in Lagos left liabilities in debt. Since Obi left office as governor, he has not collected as something as worthless as a sachet of “pure water” from the coffers of Anambra state treasury
You cannot say the same of Tinubu. He has literally converted Lagos to his personal fiefdom. Asiwaju is the de facto CEO/Chairman of “Lagos Ltd” where he has held the state hostage for the last 24 years. Apart from his humongous and outrageous pension entitlement, Tinubu’s Alpha Beta drains billions of naira monthly from the sweat of suffering Lagosians.
He can be described as a kleptomaniac and megalomaniac rolled in one personality. Tinubu sees politics as a platform to capture state resources and all the paraphernalia of government for his personal and family use, whilst Peter Obi views power as opportunity to serve.
On Atiku Abubakar, what was his net worth before he joined politics? As a custom officer, what was his total income via salaries and gratuity? How did a former custom officer manage to become so stupendously rich to the extent that he has come to believe in the power of money? I have lost count of the “gates” that have trailed Atiku’s political career.
Every four years, he strolls in from his Dubai base with the triumphant entry of an Arab prince, meets a corrupt and rudderless opposition party, the PDP, dolls out his stolen dollars and get rewarded with the presidential candidacy. After losing the election, he returns to his base in Dubai. Even if Nigeria is going up in flames, to Atiku, it is none of his business until another election cycle comes.
What a selfish nay-clueless opposition leader. The PDP, for seven years, was lost in the wilderness of docility and idiocy with no viable opposition to the APC. Wadata Plaza and its online urchins pervading cyberspace only found their lost voice when Peter Obi emerged as a force to reckon with in the coming election.
And I ask: if Nigeria is your personal company worthy 500 billion USD going through difficult times and you need to hire a new chief executive officer to revive the company. You called for applications from qualified candidates. Atiku, Obi and Tinubu should up with their CVs. Tinubu failed to state his primary and school schools and has shown signs that he will not be ready to face the panel of interviewers. Candidate Tinubu keeps sloganeering “Emi lokan” as his main qualification. Candidate Atiku believes that he can buy his way to the job of this 500 billion USD company, simply because he has applied four times for the same job and failed. And a certain Peter Obi is busy proffering solutions on how he will navigate this company out of doldrums, always persuading you to ‘GO AND VERIFY’ his proposals vis-a-vis his achievements in his previous places he worked.
Please, in all honesty, without ethno-religious bias and prejudice, who will you hire amongst the trio of Peter Obi, Atiku Abubakar and Bola Tinubu? Remember, Presidency of Nigeria is more demanding than the job of a chief executive officer of a $500 billion company. If this CEO fails, this company collapses, but if Nigerian president fails, like Buhari has done, most of the sectors—not only companies, crash.
