2023 polls: Thank God for Katsina and Lagos

I am, politically, of the All Progressives Congress and quite proudly and unapologetically so. My party is most certainly not perfect but it is still better than any other party in Nigeria. Where the Peoples Democratic Party tried to destroy our country by denying the South its turn to produce the president and where the […]

I am, politically, of the All Progressives Congress and quite proudly and unapologetically so. My party is most certainly not perfect but it is still better than any other party in Nigeria.

Where the Peoples Democratic Party tried to destroy our country by denying the South its turn to produce the president and where the Labour Party similarly became a threat to the existence of Nigeria by playing on religion and ethnicity, my party kept faith with the promise of the pride of the black race and produced Bola Tinubu to make Nigeria great again.

As the administration of our President-elect Asiwaju Bola Tinubu comes on board, we must, as a party, ensure that the inequitable tendencies and unjust practices that have dogged us thus far, as a party, are not carried forward into the new dispensation.

This is, of course, the season of cheap hustling but while all manner of people and interest groups are now showing up, angling to reap where they did not sow, I am confident enough to report that the City Boy knows his people and will most definitely carry them along in his administration.

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Indeed, this administration will be like no other.

Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s talent is to make things better and make better things while taking care of his people.

Indeed, this election panned out as a season of interesting happenstances.

Perhaps nowhere was that more manifest than in Katsina, the home state of our outgoing president, Muhammadu Buhari, and in Lagos, the home state of our incoming president, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.

While voting for APC legislative candidates in the national election, the Katsinawa and their Lagosian compatriots voted otherwise in the presidential ballot.

They were not voting against Bola Tinubu – they were protesting naira and fuel scarcity. Their astonishing quantum of votes for the same APC in the state elections barely three weeks later underscored their commitment to the APC and that electoral investment cannot be ignored or howsoever undermined.

Devastated as many of us diehard BATists were at losing Katsina and Lagos to the opposition in the presidential poll, we felt born again thanks to the gubernatorial and House of Assembly results from both states.

Unless one wants to dwell in pretence, the fear that Governor Jide Sanwo-Olu would lose in Lagos or that Governor-elect Dr Dikko Radda would not make it in Katsina sent shivers down our spines.

As a person of faith, I believe it is the will of God that we lost the presidential ballot in Katsina and Lagos.

Imagine how even more utterly insufferably obnoxious the opposition would have been if we couldn’t point to the results and pattern of voting in both states as unassailable proof of the credibility of the elections!

Indeed, this season of Lent which happens to coincide with Ramadan for our Muslim brethren has brought many a great blessing to us as a party.

Even our losses in the presidential election in Katsina and Lagos still turned out huge votes without which the Batman wouldn’t have won.

In the new dispensation, Katsina and Lagos must be fully carried along and given their due.

In fact, I can hardly think of anyone who stood for us and Asiwaju more than the likes of Governors Aminu Bello Masari and Jide Sanwo-Olu. Indeed, through them, Katsina and Lagos more than paid their dues, this election cycle.

Those of us party insiders know what went down and how we ended up winning this election.

In Katsina, Governor Masari successfully provided a leadership that demonstrated that the ruling APC is solidly on the ground and remains the party to beat. It is crystal clear that Katsina indigenes are progressives and their massive votes for the APC in the 2023 elections, as they were in 2019 and 2015, clearly demonstrate their commitment to our party’s ideals.

Fundamentally, Katsina and Lagos states paid their dues in the making of the Tinubu presidency and it is only fitting to ask that there should be reciprocal gestures for both states as the incoming dispensation settles down for the real business of governance.

 

Jesutega Onokpasa, a member of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, resides in Warri