.Comrade Tunde Oladunjoye is a political activist who has paid his dues in politics. He is the former Council Chairman Ijebu East LG, Publicity Secretary of APC in Ogun State and Assistant Secretary, Strategic Communications Committee of the APC Presidential Campaign Council. He is able and capable of playing so many roles.
He is one of those who campaigned vigorously for Asiwaju Bola Tinubu‘s victory at the polls.
CityPeople Publisher, Seye Kehinde recently got him to tell us how Asiwaju beat other contestants to it. Below are excerpts.
Congratulations to your party on its victory at the polls, on Saturday, 25th February 2023. How do you see the Victory?
Definitely, the victory is so sweet on our part. Let me thank Nigerians those who participated in the elections, including those who voted for the All Progressives Congress, APC, and those who did not vote for our party.
The election portrays a new Nigeria in the making. If you examine the figures closely, you will realise that Asiwaju scored 25% in 30 states of the federation.
That kind of spread by a presidential candidate has not been achieved since the annals of presidential elections in this country.
Secondly, the elections put the pundits wrong in many areas. For example, you will not believe somebody who won an election to become a governor of a state and who is still a sitting governor of his state, will fail to get a senatorial ticket, a senatorial district that is just one-third of his state; and we found that this is what happened in Plateau State and in one other state.
The incoming administration must initiate and sustain people-oriented programs and projects, especially in the areas of education, youth empowerment, employment, and youth inclusiveness that would spread the popularity of the administration across the nation.
Additionally, the election has helped us bury the issue of religion in the country.
For, example the issue of Christianity and Islam came to the fore during the month, leading to the elections. In fact, the campaign slogan of the APC presidential candidate, Renewed Hope, turned out to be very right; a well-chosen, well-thought-out slogan. It is called renewed hope and our hope has been renewed because, after the death of Bashorun MKO Abiola and the annulment of June 12, 1993, presidential elections, nobody would have thought that a Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket will fly in Nigeria again. The hope of our nation is renewed, that religion, tribalism and ethnicity will not take a pivotal or frontal rule in politics and governance in this country.
How do you see the reaction of Opposition parties like PDP and Labour?
Well for the reactions of the opposition parties, it is to be expected because you cannot beat a child and tell the child not to cry. However, the collective reactions of the 3 parties appear to me as comical and very funny.
For example, the PDP is claiming to have won that election, the Labour Party is claiming to have won the same election and a third party NNPP is also claiming to have also won the same election! I think we should play our politics to a mature level, not even looking for examples outside our shores, but using the example of former President Goodluck Jonathan who called President Buhari in 2015 to congratulate him even before the final results of the 2015 elections were made known. This is what I believe all the candidates that lost the presidential election should have done.
How do you see the performance of Peter Obi and Labour Party?
Well, from preliminary reports, the Labour Party has tried to make a statement. Though some of their votes from Obi’s main stronghold of South-South and South -East, have been exposed as fraudulent. We have had a case of one person signing for all the party agents in a particular polling booth and this happened in several polling units.
As I said before the elections, he was just raising money for himself. I said before the election that after this election Peter will be richer than he was before the elections because the struggle for the Nigerian presidency is not a 6-month struggle. It is not a one-year struggle, not even 5 years struggle. If you listen carefully to the president-elect, he said it was his lifetime ambition. It’s something you have to plan for over twenty or thirty years; and not just what you wake up a few months or a year before elections and say you want to become President of Nigeria.
What is your assessment of the performance of Tinubu, across the 36 states?
The results of the presidential election across the states of the federation showed that Asiwaju is the only one deserving of victory and thank God he has been elected. If you look at the states, he got at least twenty-five percent of votes in about thirty states. He got needed votes in all the six geopolitical zones of this country. So, it’s a nationalistic presidency. A president-elect that had input from all the zones. No zone, not even in the Southwest zone, where he is from, can claim sole ownership of the victory of Asiwaju Tinubu and I think that is very good for the nation. That is also going to be a reminder to the president-elect in his policies and programs that, look, you are a president of the whole nation and I think it’s also very good for our development, our politics and for many years to come, it is going to set the news tone for political leadership in this country.
