Senatorial candidate for Lagos West on the platform of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Otunba Segun Adewale popularly called Aeroland has charged stakeholders and members of the party to team up ahead of the 2023 General Elections and deliver Nigerians, from abject penury mode pervading the country.
Adewale made the call while inaugurating 5000 Aero 2023 Campaign Coordinators, which took place during the PDP parley held in Alimosho to x-rayed the electoral potentials of the party and their ultimate target as well as galvanize and articulate winning strategies ahead of the lifting of the embargo placed on party campaigns.
The PDP senatorial candidate, who sadly noted that he had been robbed of the people given mandates twice and, therefore, not leaving anything to chances any longer, said by coming together, a lot of things would be fixed through contact with those that “have not been recognised hitherto” both at the wards and zonal levels.
According to Adewale, PDP has a membership strength of close to half a million in Lagos West Senatorial District, saying getting the votes of just 200,000 of them in the district alone was enough for the party to win elections.
“Let’s come together and win the election, by the time we made it to Government House, we will fix a lot of things, that is our plan, so we are not emphasising on going to meet the leadership, our emphasis is seeing the people here at the wards and zones level that have not been recognised hitherto. They are almost half a million so if you can get just 200,000 of them it is enough for us to win elections.
“In PDP, my leader is here, our plan is that we want to work with the members. It is much easy working with the members of the party, we have more than half a million members, if you can bring that based on our own data that we have now half a million members in PDP about fifty thousand per local government multiplied by twenty is one million, I am just giving you an estimate that we calculated on our own- half a million,” he said.
The PDP chieftain, therefore, tasked his loyal followers and over 5,000 zonal coordinators to think about the importance of collective responsibility geared towards guaranteeing eventual victory at the polls, just as he further urged party leaders and members in the state to shun division or camps which he said had been the bane of PDP in the state in previous elections, and rather to the advantage of the ruling APC.
“APC has never won an election in Lagos with a million votes, the last election was 700,000, so that means from PDP there was apathy, which stems from the fact that it is Agbaje’s group, Agbaje must fail. It is Jandor’s group, Jandor must fail because if he wins the election, Jandor would now be the leader in PDP, but they are making a mistake.
“I am looking at the bigger picture that I can’t because of one person allow millions of Lagosians to continue to be suffering.
“So in PDP, a leader would believe that somebody must lose so that his group must remain, forgetting that millions are dying, I know in this local government about ten people that died because they cannot afford N10,000 to treat malaria.
“So we can win elections inside PDP without even going out, we can raise at least minimum of 1000 voters per ward and we have about 30,000 wards,” he said.
Adewale commended President Muhammadu Buhari over his assent to the new Electoral Law, noting that the technological advancement brought into play by the introduction of beavers machines, that afford scientifically accurate data makes the process a lot more transparent and sincerely skewed towards restoring integrity to the system, and shut doors against any form of manipulations and godfatherism.
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“APC is not popular at all and that is the reason why APC relied on the collation of results at the ward centres, that is why they have draconian laws because they know that the results can be rigged and it is manual. But right now the introduction of beavers would change things.
“I did commend President Buhari owing to the new Electoral Bill he signed into law, Nigeria is going to change for the better because the right people would now have the opportunity to get into power.
“Our problem is the dearth of leadership in Nigeria, the people that want to serve are just trying to get into politics and governance but most of the time they lost out at the collation centre because in Nigeria if you want to represent your community you have to know a god-father.
“If you have no godfather supporting you, you can’t get to the top, so most people that you are seeing now, almost 90 per cent of the people ruling us are given the opportunity by the god-fathers only.
“So it is difficult for the right people whom God called to serve, many of them are not in governance, but with this new Law coupled with the BVAS machine, you will be surprised a lot of people that are really called and endowed with the competence to be in governance and politics will now come out and win elections easily,” Otunba Adewale stated.
On the possibility of having an implosion within the rank and file of PDP owing to Governor Nyesome Wike’s recent outburst, Adewale noted that his present mien was expected because his tenure as governor of Rivers State would end in six months’ time and would have no more relevance if he failed to negotiate appropriately, prior to that time.
He, however, affirmed that it was more essential for the governor to preach the message of cohesion amongst PDP members to herald the desired victory than castigating the party leadership.
Also speaking, the Chairman of the Campaign Council, Chief Taiwo Abayomi Kuye, corroborated Adewale’s stance, noting that Lagos was winnable for PDP any day, any time.
Kuye dismissed the possibility of any form of implosion in PDP, saying things had not gone to that level in the party, just as he pointedly noted that everybody at the gathering was Atikulated, and would work for the victory of all PDP candidates in the 2023 General Elections.
“On the crisis, somebody talked about implosion, I don’t think it has gone to that extent. Everybody you see here today are Atikulated, we will make sure we deliver Jandor, we will make sure we deliver Aeroland, we will ensure we deliver all Assembly candidates, we will ensure we deliver Atiku as the next president come, February 2023,” he said.
Director, Planning, Strategy and Education, Aero 2023, Dr Adebiyi Phillips, while noting that managing crisis was key as, according to him, the crisis exists within all other parties as well, urged PDP leaders and members to bury their hatchet and ego, and “come together as a body and face the elections for the purpose of retooling Nigeria.”
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