Some chieftains of the All Progressives Congress on Saturday staged a solidarity walk in Akure, the Ondo State capital for the presidential candidate of the party, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, saying the candidate would win the forthcoming presidential election.
The APC chieftains, under the auspices of the Tinubu Independent Action Movement, included the senator representing Ondo North Senatorial District, Prof. Ajayi Boroffice; a former Minister of State for Niger Delta, Senator Tayo Alasoadura, and a former governorship aspirant of the APC in Ondo State, Olusola Oke (SAN).
They led thousands of party members on the walk.
The chairman of the group, Alasoadura, while speaking at the rally, expressed confidence that the APC would win the forthcoming general elections.
He said, “The target of TIAM is to mobilise massively for Tinubu. If you remember, during the last election, we lost the presidential election in Ondo State; we don’t want that type of thing again. We want to mobilise massively and ensure that this time round, not only will APC win in Ondo State, we will also win well because if we don’t, it will be like a shame on us. We are confident that our candidate will win very well in Nigeria. Are we going to lag behind in Ondo State?
“So, when we find out that we aren’t seeing the mobilisation of our people well, we thought we should use this one (rally) to kick-start the mobilisation of our people, so that, by the time our leader, the presidential candidate will be here on the 7th of January, our people would have been energised.
“One of the reasons we created TIAM is that we don’t want Minister of State again. It is like a condemnation; if you are in the office, they can’t bring file to you; if you are having a gathering like this, you can’t talk, you will sit down with your colleagues like a ‘mumu’ , you won’t talk; if you go to the Federal Executive Council meeting, you can’t present a memo, it is the minister that has the power. We don’t want that again, we want to contribute our quota freely, without asking our principal for anything, so that when the time comes, whoever is going to be appointed from this state will be given something good.”
Boroffice, on his part, described Tinubu as the most experienced and most competent of all the presidential candidates for next year’s presidential election.
He said, “We believe that there must be activities; this (rally) is not organised by the party but TIAM, because we believe that we have to do it. The leaders are Senator Alasoadura, myself, Chief Akinyelure and many others. So, we are not asking for one penny from Tinubu; we are putting everything together from our own resources; we believe that this is our time, ‘Awa-lokan’, Ondo State is the cradle of progressive politics in Nigeria, starting from the time of baba Ajasin, we believe that we won’t come last this time round.
“So, we want to mobilise our people, so that come February, they will all come out en masse and vote Tinubu/Shettima; we will win in Ondo State by a landslide.”
Boroffice, who is the Deputy Majority Leader of the Senate, added, “We know what Tinubu has done in Lagos, he’s going to repeat it in Nigeria; industries will come up, the roads will be better, there will be jobs for our people, agriculture will pick up, education will stand, health will be available, that is what we want and I know he can do it, and he will do it.”
Also, Oke described the TIAM as an independent group that is self-financing but would cooperate with other party structures.
He said, “The Yoruba man will tell you that on the day of the death of an elephant, you will see all manner of knives. Because Asiwaju is involved, because Asiwaju is our own, because we are sure Asiwaju will turn things around, he will reproduce Nigeria clean as he did in Lagos, we believe he has the capacity, he has the vision, he has the energy and the capacity to turn things around, that is why a few of us as leaders decided to come together. The core party activities will come up in the big wing, to begin to awaking our people to the need to come out en masse and vote for Asiwaju and other APC candidates.
“We are not taking over the role of the party; the party is coming out big on the 7th of January; Asiwaju will come to Ondo State. But before then, we are just creating awareness. We believe in him, we believe he can do it and he’s going to do it.”
