Igbos Must Learn Political Skills From Tinubu If They Want To Win - Ogunlewe

policies are good but they are not implementable with the current structure we are operating. You can’t have the same structure for power supply in Lagos and Sokoto. What are they going to use power for in Sokoto? No matter the amount of money you ask them to pay in Lagos, once there is constant electricity that will boost manufacturing and businesses, they will pay. They will even come together and build power plants on their own and run it. How long can we continue having a feeding bottle federal government, trying to feed everybody? It is impossible! Most of the successes we have recorded is through the private sector. Look at how we successfully managed our telecommunications sector successfully with government support. When it was NITEL, everything crashed but when they gave licences to MTN, Glo and others, look at how competitive it has been. If not for that revolution, where would Nigeria have been today? We just have to take the bull by the horns and allow the private sector to take over. Public servants are becoming a very bad influence on the Nigerian people where a level 12 officer will have 15 houses in Abuja. Where did he get that kind of money from? We cannot continue to steal federal government’s money and everybody will keep quiet. No matter the policy we try to implement, it will never succeed as long as the level of corruption is this high in our country.Another issue is the continued detention of Nnamdi Kanu. Do you think his unconditional release will reduce the unrest in the South-East?What is the problem? Let Nnamdi Kanu go through the trial. If he is not guilty, he will be released. He said no court in Nigeria can try him, that is his own view. Let the federal government start the trial. When the judge sees that there is no case there, they will do a no-case submission and he will be released. Why are they afraid of trial and keep begging for his release? If they have started the trial all this while, it would have been concluded by now. Instead of going through trial, they wanted to finish everything on technicalities. What is the big deal about trial? Can’t they see what former US President, Donald Trump is going through? Is Nnamdi Kanu bigger than Trump? As far as I am concerned, Kanu is the one delaying the trial through all these tactics that no court in Nigeria can try him. Let the trial start. The prosecutor will present his evidence and Nnamdi Kanu’s lawyer will present his own too. The judge will look at everything and if there is anything there, they will throw it away, and he will regain his freedom. His lawyers are the ones causing the problem by trying to frustrate the trial on grounds of technicalities. How can they presume that he cannot get justice and he will be found guilty? Kanu should get a good defence lawyer who will present his case. How many people have gone through treasonable felony case in Nigeria? Some have been released while some were jailed. Let Nnamdi Kanu go through the trial. Nothing will happen. If he is not guilty, he will be freed.You granted an interview few years ago where you said President Bola Tinubu achieved more than the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Do you still stand by the statement today?I didn’t say so. The context is different. I was talking about the capacity to win election. It is different from the capacity to perform. No leader in that country can perform better than Awolowo in terms of what he was able to do. But to win election easily, as done by President Bola Tinubu, just compare the two men. My position is quite clear: Awolowo has the capacity to perform while Tinubu has the capacity to win elections easily. That was what I was talking about. Don’t equate Awolowo with Tinubu in terms of performance. No! Awolowo performed but the capacity of a southerner like Tinubu to acquire that level of trust from the northerners, to the extent that they want to give him power. That is what I am talking about and I still believe so. What was the inhibition for someone like MKO Abiola to win an election successfully? How do you think Tinubu was able to attract more votes in the North than the South? That was what I was seeing at that time when I compared him with Awolowo. It requires somebody who is a researcher to be able to decipher what I am talking about. Tinubu has the capacity to win elections and it is a skill. If you don’t have that skill, you can never win. He has been preparing and strategising to become president since 1999. Look at the results of the last presidential election. Who could have imagined that a southerner will be so welcomed in the north like they did for Tinubu? We couldn’t have imagined that will happen when we were growing up. Igbo people wanted to win presidential election, can they borrow from the skills of Bola Tinubu to be able to sell themselves to the whole of Nigeria and win? What did Tinubu do to be so attractive to the northerners? During the primaries, they never wanted him to win but he did. Even the northern governors in APC had to tell northern presidential aspirants to step down for him. What did he have that no other politician in the South have? When I saw what Buhari was doing, I knew Tinubu will win the primary. The performance of Papa Awolowo is unparalleled but Tinubu has the capacity to win election, especially in the northern part of the country. If you don’t win in the north, you can never be the president of Nigeria. The strategy Tinubu used to win the presidential election require a lot of study. It is unimaginable.https://thescrutinyng.com/index.php/2024/05/27/awolowo-performed-but-tinubu-has-the-capacity-to-win-elections-ogunlewe/