…if finally paired veteran politicians will run for cover
…says talks at advance stage
… people are already donating to support us
Spokesman, National Consultative Forum, Labour Party, Dr. Yinusa Tanko has said that the commonality between former Governor of Kano State, Musa Kwankwaso and his counterpart, Peter Obi is that both men took away personal agrandisement from governance.
Tanko made this revelation in an exclusive interview with TheNewsGuru.com, (TNG) giving essential credentials of both presidential flag bearers of NNPP and Labour Party.
According to Tanko, talks are at advance stage to see how these two rare Nigerians can be paired to change the political narrative for the betterment of Nigerians.
Hear him:
Asked why he’s so confident of the joint ticket of Kwankwaso and Obi, he said: “They feel the pain of the youth and so they leverage most of their activities on the educational line, producing educated Nigerians that can transform into productive youths and that for me also resonate what Peter Obi is saying that I am changing the narrative from a consumer nation into a productive nation.
“When you become a productive nation definitely your economy will change and that will impact on the economy and all, and that will resonate directly to take care of insecurity because anybody that is gainfully employed, anybody that is working and eating cannot be engaged in any kind of war, even allow himself to be used by anybody because actually what he is looking for is for him to be economically empowered and he has it, so he doesn’t need to be involved in anything untoward.
“So those are three major areas that we need to work with and so immediately when this comes out, a lot of people believe in it, they will share it and feel that look we need to work with this particular individual.
Looking at the two of them, having been governors of their state in different time, what are other similarities you see in their performance?
“Their similarity is that they’ve taken away individual aggrandizement to interest of the public, to them the people is first.
“Like Obi said he had phone numbers of the class captains or head prefects of over 500 schools and each one of them, each school he has visited one on one and that he was even giving them N5million annually from his security vote.
“The security votes that most people lavish, is what he turned into, used for the people and he had a situation where he went to the church to pray and an old woman saw him, he drew him out and he doesn’t go to these kind of places with security men, so the woman challenged him, that salaries and gratuity of people have not been paid and all and God will not hear your prayers and that is why he owed nobody.
“And that is the same with Kwankwaso, in fact he himself, when he first of all sent those children to school, he now said look, I heard your guys (his commissioners) are sending your to school, these ones I will send to school myself, he made sure that they are children of the poor, all his commissioners he said you guys are not going to benefit from this but all of the children of the downtrodden, poor people, free scholarship, not only that he made the full payment until the day of graduation.
“He said if it is clothes, I have had clothes, if it is women I have had women, if t is money I have gotten money, so this time around that I am here, I am working for the people and if you are not ready to work for the people, don’t come near me.
“So these are the kinds of messages that really resonate with me and with a lot of people and so it becomes expediently important that these people should think about how to transform what they have done physically.
“You lead by practical examples, what you have done, you can easily use it again. So they transformed their states in using it as a template and now their interest is to replicate it nationwide.
Out there, some people are saying that Obi cannot match the two candidates that Atiku and Tinubu that they will use money to buy their way. Some others will say that INEC will compromise; what do you say about all these?
“So you see the issue is that even Buhari did not have money but Peter Obi, they have goodwill because of what they have done and the goodwill has transformed into a lot of donations, people are willing to give, in fact while I was with the chairman, people were coming there saying I want to donate and each donation is not for them to buy you off, no, the donation coming in is for logistics.
“The truth is Obi was asked where is the structure, he said look the hungry Nigerians, the 100million hungry Nigerians are his structure. So you that want to emancipate yourself in the next 4years, will you be looking for anybody to come and give and you eat, it is like a personal project on everybody; so collecting money is completely out of the case now.