Director general of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Campaign Council in Lagos State, Senator Ganiyu Olanrewaju Solomon, yesterday, described the emergence of Bola Tinubu as president-elect and the re-election of Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State, as an unusual combination for a new Nigeria and a progressive Lagos.
Solomon, in a statement he personally signed, said anyone conversant with Tinubu’s political trajectory and his career path, would admit his route to any successful feat, had never been easy.
He added that when the heat heavily turned on Tinubu in the lead up to the national elections, it became more apparent that he would emerge victorious at the end of the day.
“It is not enough to congratulate Asiwaju Bola Tinubu for the success of this hotly contested presidential election, it is even more important to acknowledge his tenacity, doggedness, determination and commitment to any cause at all. Asiwaju was resolved to win this election and he went all out in spite of misgivings and enduring personal attacks from everywhere.
“That makes him a very rare breed in leadership study and of course, an uncommon inspirer to all of us and generations unborn. You know, his creed has always been that power isn’t served a la carte but that you must earn it. Nothing or no event in our contemporary history has ever validated that assertion like his victory on Saturday, February 25. He earned this win, let’s be fair and honest,” he said.
On the governorship election, Solomon said he was not perturbed at all in the days leading to the exercise, not even by the outcome of the presidential election results in the state, because “Governor Sanwo-Olu’s work spoke volume for him. While we took the presidential election results in the state in our stride, we never fretted about the governorship election in the state.
“Without sounding needlessly partisan or immodest, you had a governor, who was in office for four years and in the whole of the four years, he was managing one crisis or the other and yet, real governance never suffered. What more or how else do you measure qualitative leadership or a governor deserving re-election?
“From Covid-19, which cost the state time and money, and the #EndSARS protests to which Lagos lost billions, much less other challenges like the Okada menace, fire outbreaks in critical places and repeated building collapses, the governor stood tall and tamed them all. He definitely deserved his sweeping re-election without as much any contest.
“This year’s generation was definitely not perfect, but an arguably free and fair exercise. An election which threw up staggering surprises cannot be said not to be free, just because you lost in some places. Can they say the same of the places they won? That would be double standards and it is not what forward-looking Nigerian should dwell on.
“What is important and good news to us now is that with an Asiwaju at the centre and Lagos in the same political family, the president would be renewing hope at the centre, and our governor will be sustaining and consolidating his efforts in the state and the entire country will be better for it,” he said.
The former senator for Lagos West, however, commended the team spirit of the APC family, both at the national and states levels, saying, “Everyone deserves a pat on the back for this outstanding showing, despite unfounded misgivings.”
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