Group Blasts Atiku, Obi, Says Insults Won’t Distract APC from 80% Vote Target for Tinubu

Victor Ogunje in Ado Ekiti

A political group, Jagabanists Nationwide Support Group, rooting for the presidential aspiration of the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, has declared that no amount of criticisms would distract the ruling party from garnering 80 percent of total votes cast in the 2023 elections for the former Lagos State governor.

The group said the barrage of insults being hurled at Tinubu, by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party presidential candidates, Alhaji  Abubakar Atiku and Peter Obi respectively,  won’t derail the party’s focus from the set target to ensure that APC wins the election with wide margin.

The group’s National Coordinator, Temitope Omotayo, stated this in Ado Ekiti, Ekiti State, yesterday during  a solidarity rally held to mobilise support for Tinubu in the state.

Omotayo posited that Tinubu ranks higher above Atiku and Obi in their contributions to the Nigeria’s democratic growth, exuding confidence that the former Lagos State governor will triumph in the 2023 poll.

The legal practitioner added that the kernel objective behind the formation of the group was to canvass votes for Tinubu across the 774 local government areas and 176,846 units across the country, describing the ‘insults’ from opposition as mere “noisemaking”, and that the APC won’t allow to neither derail nor distract from its focus.

Omotayo appealed to Nigerians to vote “for a man who has a rich and intimidating political and administrative credentials, rather than playing into the hands of those” he described as “neophytes and inexperienced” that will only turn the running of the nation into “trial and error.”

He said: “We have been following his political life and antecedents, especially how he contributed to the nation building from the NADECO era. We are not going to engage the opposition at the pedestrian level. We are only focused on our major goal, which is winning the presidency.

“This man, Tinubu, has all his businesses here in Nigeria. He has mentored and developed many politicians, leaders and youths. We are targeting over 80 percent of the total votes cast in 2023 for him to  emerge victorious.

“We are supporting and mobilising for him because he has the vision, and he showed this vision when he was the Lagos State governor. Under him, infrastructural development, legal and security development were utmost. Many of the states copied their economic blueprints from Lagos.

“This is the kind of leader we need- visionary and well-endowed-and the one who can build, not those who can only pillage and plunder.”

Speaking about the membership of the group, Omotayo said: “We have over 60,000 members nationwide and another 17,000 social media allies. We have coordinators across the country. We are visible in all the six geopolitical zones, working with people of like-minds.

“The choice of former Borno State Governor, Kashim Shettima, as the vice presidential candidate also lent credence to the fact that Tinubu was ready for governance. You can see the transformations that were going on in Lagos and Borno States.

“This is not a mere social media group. We have commenced house-to-house, market-to-market, church-to-church and mosque-to-mosque campaigns for APC.

“It is 100 percent sure that Tinubu will win the election. Asiwaju’s name is reverberating in the Northeast, Southwest, North Central, South-south and everywhere, unlike others, who are ethnic champions.”

The State Coordinator of the group, Akinlua Oyenike, added that their coordinators in all the 16 councils, 177 wards and 2,445 units of Ekiti State have commenced aggressive mobilisation for Tinubu ahead of the poll.