Sen. Olorunnimbe Mamora, Nigeria’s Minister of State for Health, stated on Tuesday that Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) is the most qualified candidate to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari in 2023.
Mamora, who admitted that Peter Obi of the Labour Party is receiving “huge” support from Nigerians, primarily young people, claimed that the former governor of Anambra State would not prevail in the upcoming presidential election.
The Minister explained why he believed Obi had little chance of winning the presidency and compared him to an independent campaign in America that has never resulted in a president.
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Structure is a key element in Nigerian politics, and according to the former senator from Lagos Central who talked on Channels Television Political Paradigm earlier on Tuesday, Obi has yet to establish one.
Mamora said: “What I see, with all due respect is what you can call independent candidacy in Labour, and to the best of my knowledge even in America, no independent candidate has ever won the presidency. They can win in the Senate or House of Representatives but not in the presidential, so it will be a miracle of the century.
“I won’t dismiss it (support for Peter Obi) but it doesn’t seem to me that it will be as such as would cause havoc in this system at the end of the day. This is because we do our checks on a regular basis. We look at the spread; we look at the capacity on the ground. You see, you cannot underrate the role of structures in politics and particularly in elections because this is the reality. There are many logistics involved in electioneering.”
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When asked if he sees the support Obi is getting from Labour Unions and the youths, the Minister said: “The same way all these people are saying they will back Peter Obi is the same way they are saying they will back other candidates, especially those frontline candidates.”
Mamora, however, warned other political parties including APC not to underrate Obi as well as any candidate in the presidential contest.
The Minister who boasts that his party’s candidate Tinubu remains the best among all said: “I said with all due respect, no one should underrate anyone. In a contest, you don’t underrate anyone but with all due respect to all these front liners, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi and Kwankwaso, of course, those are the faces we see when you tune into any channel.
“So, you cannot underrate but I am saying that in spite of that and with all due respect to other candidates, he (Tinubu) is still the number one candidate to beat, that’s the point I am making.”
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He asserted that the rise of the Labour Party and the New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP) as rivals to the two major parties, the APC and PDP, is a sign of the system’s development, but insisted that their efforts will not be sufficient to win the election.
“It is part of the growth in the system as far as I am concerned but again don’t forget that is just the way it is in all these other countries. Go to the UK, it is not as if you don’t have other parties but we’re talking of the Labour Party and the Conservatives, isn’t it? Go to America we are talking about Democrats and The Republicans,” Mamora added.
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