2023: ‘Tinubu has the gift of assembling people who can deliver’

A public affairs analyst and veteran journalist, Ayodele Akinsola, has said the All Progressives Congress (APC) flag bearer, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, is endowed with the gift of assembling people with brains who can deliver.

He also said the APC presidential candidate in the 2023 poll “does not allow people’s talents or gifts to be wasted.”

Akinsola, who is the Managing Editor of Persecondnews, a transnational online newspaper headquartered in U.S.,  said this while speaking as a guest on the programme, “Agenda 2023: Roadmap to 2023 general elections”, on OGtv, owned by Ogun State Government.

On the recent call from Tinubu, asking the flagbearer to the People’s Democratic People (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, to step down and endorse him as the next president of Nigeria, Akinsola noted that both Atiku and Tinubu are “political allies”, pointing out that Tinubu was just throwing banters.

Akinsola recalls that Tinubu had in Kaduna last week asked his political rival, Atiku, to step down and endorse him ahead of the February 2023 presidential poll, claiming he had supported in the past to contest for president.

“It’s a payback time,” Tinubu had said: Tinubu who made the call when he met with leaders from the Northern part of the country under the umbrella of the Arewa Joint Committee for an interactive session, asked Atiku to reciprocate the “gesture” he gave to him when he contested for the presidency in 2007 under the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) by dropping his ambition and endorsing him.

On this note, the PSN Editor said: “He was just throwing banters. Political party supporters need to know that these people are political allies, they are friends. Atiku and Tinubu have been political allies, they have been members of the same political family at some point.

“It’s now that we are transiting to elections in 2023 and it becomes imperative for both of them to contest the election under different platforms; they are friends.”

Commenting on Tinubu’s “sense of entitlement” that it is his turn to be the president, the public affairs analyst said: “In Nigeria, nobody will give it to you on a platter of gold if you don’t go out there to fight for it, and in fighting for it you have to be assertive. 

“I think what Bola Tinubu has done is to set the tone for the presidential race so that between the two players, it would be like ‘look, I have been in the background, I have been sponsoring people, I have been grooming people to assume political power and positions in the country’. 

“In all of this, I would give it to Bola Tinubu because I believe that he has this strategy, he has the gift of assembling brains, people who can deliver, people who can make things happen. He is also somebody who does not allow people’s talents or gifts to be wasted.”

On the possibility of APC and PDP dividing votes from the North in the 2023 presidential elections, Akinsola added: “Of course Bola Tinubu and Atiku Abubakar will divide the North. Don’t forget Bola Tinubu is not a stranger to the North, he has always been interfacing with them, engaging them and just like the late MKO Abiola made an inroad to the North.

“I believe Tinubu has made successful inroad to the North, he has successfully built political bridges across the Northern parts of the country.

“And what is going to play out is that for the two of them; Tinubu and Atiku, they are going to divide the North. The North is no longer monolithic, it’s no longer what we think it is.”