Deke Alake, Director of Media and Communications of the Campaign Council of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the All Progressives Congress (APC) standard bearer, said Peter Obi of the Labour Party is a fluke, and his principal is the substance.
Alake stated this during an interview with Vanguard, adding that Tinubu looks good to win the 2023 presidential election.
The former Commissioner for Information and Strategy during Tinubu’s administration in Lagos, said. “In addition, those who are gravitating to Peter Obi are not analyzing his antecedents, especially in terms of performance. If that is put into consideration, Peter Obi will trail far behind and this is not in any way to denigrate him. These are facts. Oh, he has been governor, but our candidate Asiwaju has also been governor for eight years.
“However, in terms of performance, the difference is clear like night and day. There is no basis for comparison. Therefore, if the people who are emotionally or sentimentally attached to Peter Obi are educated or enlightened and are told to do rational analysis, they would not to make a mistake of their lifetime. They will discover a difference; they will discover that it is fluke and this is substance and our candidate is the substance. What we need at this point is visioning.”
Responding to the question of if 2023 is the year of the third force, he said, “I cannot sit down here and deny the fact that there is an amount of groundswell of frustration amongst the youth and among the cross section of the populace, which is actually the driving force behind what you term as the popularity of Peter Obi on social media. However, I can tell you that it is natural (the feeling, the pent up anger of all of those that are venting their spleen through the symbol of Peter Obi).
“The aggravation of all those pent up anger is being channeled toward Peter Obi on social media. However, social media is not going to determine the 2023 elections. It has never determined any election in Nigeria to a large extent and it is not going to determine the 2023 election. Neither is it going to determine our elections in several years to come. You need to do a critical cold rational analysis of the political behaviour and the political environment in which we are; the political environment of our people. Now all those people who are regarded as social media warriors or who are active on social media, if you take their population, you will discover that it is not going to sway the larger voters. For instance, how many of our rural dwellers or farmers are on social media. Why we think social media is such a fuss now is because the elite (like you and I) are on social media.
“However, when you aggregate the social media activists’ population, vis-à-vis the entire population of the country, you will discover that it is almost infinitesimal. Therefore, whoever is basing his/her judgment on 2023 in terms of social media has missed it. We are experienced in this matter. We are not just smoking our fire on social media alone, we are moving on to all strata of the society, which we have always done. How, let’s go into grade stacks, even amongst those who are on social media, what percentage of them are going to vote at the end of the day? What percentage of them are registered voters? A large percentage of them are what the Nollywood people call waka pass. They are not committed voters. Statistics and empirical analysis support this.”
