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Professor Christopher Imumolen, the Accord social gathering’s presidential candidate, has poured chilly water on claims that solely candidates with luggage of cash stood an opportunity of successful this 12 months’s presidential elections.
Thirty-nine-year-old Imumolen, the youngest presidential candidate within the 2023 race, was reacting to what Afe Babalola mentioned in regards to the function cash would play in figuring out who would win the February 25 presidential election.
In his message to the nation on New Yr’s Day, the famend authorized luminary had mentioned the winner of the extremely anticipated presidential polls might be one who had a seemingly inexhaustible warfare chest of money to sway votes his method, saying: “The 2023 presidential elections is just not going to be received by one who thinks he could make the distinction. Neither will or not it’s the particular person with the best age, well being, training, or patriotism. Reasonably, it is going to be the one that has made cash on this nation, the particular person with the deepest pocket that can win the elections.”
However reacting, whereas fielding questions in a Channels TV programme, ‘Politics At present’, on Thursday night time, Imumolen doused Babalola’s claims, citing a number of cases to assist his place on the difficulty.
“With all due respect, I’ll wish to disagree with our most realized elder statesman, Afe Babalola, on his claims that the particular person with the deepest pocket on this 12 months’s presidential race will in the end win the elections.
“There are a number of cases, significantly for the reason that introduction of the Fourth Republic in 1999 the place cash was by no means the figuring out consider whom grew to become Nigeria’s president,” Imumolen mentioned.
“Let’s begin with the 1999 presidential elections between Chief Olusegun Obasanjo of the PDP and Chief Olu Falae of the then AD.
“Obasanjo, if we’d recall, received that election regardless of not having luggage of cash to throw round. The truth is, he had simply returned from jail the place he had no cash or performed any energetic politics earlier than the elections.
“Then, got here his successor Umar Yar’Adua. Yar’Adua, we additionally know had simply completed his tenure as Katsina State governor and wasn’t one you possibly can confer with as somebody who might, solely on the power of his wealth, win the nation’s presidency.
“Even then, we had extra individuals within the race who might have overwhelmed him arms down have been money the only real determinant of who clinched the presidency. However on the finish, he received.
“By no means thoughts that he mentioned the system that ushered him into energy was flawed. The reality is that he received.
“Once more, let’s have a look at present president, Muhammadu Buhari. Everyone knows that if it got here to who had essentially the most money to throw round, it will have been Dr Goodluck Jonathan who was then the incumbent president.
“But, towards all odds, Buhari stormed to victory and he’s nearly finishing his eighth-year tenure as Nigeria’s president.
“So, these examples inform us that it isn’t essentially the person with the deepest pocket who at all times finally ends up as Nigeria’s president.
“On this 12 months’s presidential race, I believe the individuals’s real want to see a change from the previous methods of doing issues to a brand new one might show the figuring out issue, quite than the now outdated technique of attempting to purchase individuals’s conscience via prodigal spending which may not produce any outcomes as a result of our as soon as gullible individuals have turn out to be wiser,” he mentioned.
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