By Kolawole Ojebisi
A former Director-General of the Peter Obi Presidential Campaign Organisation, Dr Doyin Okupe, has said both former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and Labour Party Presidential (LP) Candidate in the 2023 presidential elections, Mr Peter Obi are criticizing President Bola Tinubu to remain relevant till the next election season.
Okupe maintained that his former principal, Peter Obi and the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) presidential candidate in the 2023 general elections, Atiku Abubakar, wouldn’t have performed better than Tinubu if either of the duo was elected as president.
Okupe, a former presidential aide said only Tinubu has the wherewithal, fortitude and resolve to confront the challenges plaguing Nigeria, and pull it out of the quagmire.
Okupe said this when he was featured as a guest on Monday’s edition of Channels Television’s Politics Today.
He said: “By benefit of hindsight, none of the three major candidates who ran for that election, except for Tinubu, could have faced this quagmire we are and have the heart to breast it.
“They don’t even have the knowledge and the resources to do what he is doing now.”
When asked if he does not sound like a betrayer to Obi, who he once described as the best man for the job, Okupe shook his head.
The medical doctor stated that he had previously worked on faulty assumptions until he saw the courage and passion with which Tinubu was trying to steer the economy out of the woods.
“That was why I said by the benefit of hindsight. There is no betrayal. Has Peter Obi told you what he would do if he was president? Talk is cheap.
“It is not as if I don’t believe in Peter Obi. He was a damn good candidate when we got him. But we lost that election, and a better man won. It is a competition. I thought Obi was better than Tinubu. That was what I thought.
“But seeing what Bola Tinubu is doing and his disposition, especially after meeting him yesterday (Sunday), I am more than convinced that if this gentleman is given understanding and time, he is going to get us out of this problem,” he stated.
When asked if he has a problem with Atiku, whom he was also close to while working for former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Okupe denied having anything against him.
He, however, faulted the former Vice President’s proposal on the economy and how he could have performed better than Tinubu if he had emerged President.
He said: “I am telling you, none of these other two people (Atiku and Obi) could have done better than him. That is why I said talk is cheap. Fuel subsidy has been on the table for the last 20 years. Nobody had the nerve to even try to do it.
“I read Atiku’s proposition. He said if he was the President, he would borrow $10bn and another $25bn to do something. That makes $35bn. Who is going to lend you money? By the time Buhari was leaving, Nigeria was not sellable. Nobody was going to give Nigeria $1 bn anywhere.
“Because we could not borrow money anywhere, the Buhari administration went ahead and did an illegal and unlawful thing through the ways of means and printed $21trn. So when you are faced with that, it is a quagmire. That is confounding. Only a brave man, one with mental resources and confidence in himself, can do what Bola Tinubu is doing.”
