The presidential candidate of the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria, Oby Ezekwesili, has alleged that not even National Leader of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu, has total control of Alimosho Local Government Area, the largest LG in Lagos State.
In a write up for The Guardian, Ezekwesili alleged that Tinubu failed to get a significant number of votes for his party and President Muhammadu Buhari from the local government in the 2015 election.
She said, “Let us look at the data. Data is something these old order politicians who want to rule forever haven’t bothered to engage with. Alimosho for example, is the largest local government in Lagos state with over 1.2million persons resident according to official census figures.
“In 2015, only about 650,000 of these people registered and obtained their Permanent Voters Cards. Faced with the rather unattractive choice of voting for the Peoples Democratic Party’s Goodluck Jonathan, or the anyone-but-Jonathan candidacy represented by Muhammadu Buhari, a great many voters chose to abstain.
“At the end of the day, the #APCPDP, the twin terrors of Nigeria, only managed to conjure up 140,000 votes between them. In Almighty Alimosho. This says something loud and clear, that Asiwaju Bola Tinubu with all of his ‘might’ and experience in so-called grassroots politics could, at the end of the day, deliver only 86,897 votes for his candidate Buhari and their party.
“Where then does the source of this his widely reported power come from? Isn’t he grossly overestimated? Asiwaju Tinubu and his like in #APCPDP control only as much as we let them. And the situation is the same in every other part of the country- from Kano to Ilorin- where any godfather claims to hold sway.
“These men are only as powerful as we, the citizens, let them be. They have been getting away with this for so long because we outsourced our responsibility as voters to people who do not necessarily represent our best interests.”
