Director of Strategy of the Tinubu campaign organization, Dele Alake, said Sunday night that the presidential candidate of the All Progressive Congress Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu never denied former Governor, Akinwumi Ambode of his second term.
Alake said rather than what is being bandied about by those he accused of mere sentiments, Ambode lost the election to a better candidate.
Alake, a former Commissioner for Information and Strategy under Tinubu, was speaking during an online interaction on Twitter space tagged “Asiwaju Bola Tinubu: A Political Colossus.”
“The governorship mandate is not for Asiwaju to give or take. It is for the people of Lagos State to give or to take or withdraw,” Alake said a huge audience on the Twitter space.
He said Ambode, while in office, committed some political missteps that led to his exit from office adding, “Ambode was in office and for whatever reasons, he might have committed and of course, he committed gaps, faus pax, but he also went through the motion.”
The Director of Strategy said people have forgotten that Ambode was never prevented from participating in the primaries but that he lost.
“May be people have forgotten and have collective amnesia. Ambode went through the political process and lost. Nobody took the ticket. Asiwaju did not take the ticket from him. He contested with Babajide Sanwo-Olu and lost. The primaries were conducted and contested in the open all over the state. The media covered it. Why do people always come to such partisanship occasioned by blind prejudices?” he said
In a democracy, Alake said it would be unfair to blame Tinubu for throwing his weight behind a candidate of his choice adding “Yes! It is Asiwaju’s right to support any aspirant. It is a natural phenomenon now. I would have my sympathy for somebody and you would have your won for someone else and we put our resources into the game and the man who has the largest votes wins because it is a game of number.”
Expressing worries why people would be angry that Ambode lost the second term bid, Alakde said Sanwo-Olu emerged “The same way Ambode himself emerged.”
He asked, “Have people forgotten that Ambode was not the only contestant? He was not handed the ticket by Asiwaju in 2014 at Onikan Stadium. “The current Deputy Governor, Femi Hamzat contested at that primaries at Onikan and I remember more than 12 others contested with him.
“I think they were about 13 or 14 that contested in 2014 with Ambode in 2014 and Ambode emerged. So, would all the others who lost accuse Asiwaju of not giving them the ticket? The thing was done in the open. Fast-forward to 2019, it was direct primaries and open. The man lost. Sanwo-Olu won. Would it be Asiwaju’s fault that Sanwo-Olu won?”
Ambode, since loosing the second term bid, had gone into some political silence.
He mostly not seen identifying with political activities in the state.
His loyalists made some attempts at making some presence during the last build up to the primaries of the APC in Lagos.
A commissioner under Ambode, Wale Oluwo, obtained the governorship nomination form but later accused the organisers of the primaries of edging him out of the race.
Not much has been heard of the Ambode group since then.