2023: Don’t Take Opposition For Granted, Ribadu Warns APC

Director, Directorate of Stakeholders’ Relations, of the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential campaign council, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu has warned that the opposition parties and their candidates should not be taken for granted.

He however declared that Tinubu would sweep the presidential election with a landslide margin in the forthcoming general elections.

Speaking yesterday during the inauguration of the 132-member directorate of stakeholder relations, Ribadu, a presidential candidate of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in 20211, said Tinubu is far better than any of the presidential candidates of the opposition political parties.

The former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) said, “Luckily for us, our job is cut out for us. We have the most saleable product in the market today. There is no one candidate out there that is better than our own.

“Asiwaju Tinubu is an accomplished human being and a thorough bred administrator and maverick politician. He has something to show from his glowing antecedent, he will not learn on the job.

“He also has a wide network of friends and associates everywhere in Nigeria, which makes our job of outreach very much easier. Though this election is literally a walk over for us, we should not leave anything to chances.

“We should not under-rate our opponents. We should work assiduously to make the margin of winning too wide that the victory will be massive and sweet.”

Ribadu urged members of the Directorate drawn from various field of human endeavours to work as one family in an atmosphere of cordiality and respect for each other.

“To ease operation, we have decided to divide the operations of the directorate into North and South. This is done to ensure that our work is targeted and thorough,” he added.

“We are also adopting a bottom-up and up-bottom approaches simultaneously through the creation of thematic area Units and leadership at zonal and state levels.

“The work will be guided with clear terms of reference to guide our operations and assigned tasks. Immediately after this formal event we will discuss in details and provide you with the necessary guidance to hit the ground running.”

On his part, founding national chairman of the APC, Chief Bisi Akande, who inaugurated the Directorate expressed satisfaction with the performance of the APC-led administration since May 29, 2015.

Akande said Tinubu has the wherewithal to administer the country irrespective of its diverse and heterogeneous nature.