The Labour Party’s governorship candidate in Oyo State for the 2023 election, Tawfiq Akinwale claimed that if the party’s presidential candidate, Peter Obi, had won the recent presidential race, Nigeria would have faced significant difficulties.
During a Symfoni News interview, Akinwale labelled Obi as intolerant towards his Muslim compatriots.
Akinwale accused Obi of being the cause behind multiple defections from the Labour Party, especially among governorship candidates from the North.
He said, “The Peter Obi that you know is a deceit; the Peter Obi that you know is a pretender. All the bigots of this world is (sic) Peter Obi because he is not somebody that should be trusted with the leadership of this country. Glory be to God almighty that did not allow him to win the election. If he had won, Nigerians would have been in a serious problem because of his attitude.
“What I observed is this, I may be wrong, 12 of us contested for that election, 12 Labour Party governorship candidates in the whole country. You know some states did not go into the contest at that time. But 12 of us, I was the only one who happened to be Muslim, but I observed that during the campaigns, the candidate of Sokoto, the governorship candidate, decamped to APC (All Progressives Congress) because when he went for a campaign, he did not introduce him.
“He didn’t make him relevant at all. He did this to the Taraba governorship candidate and his deputy, did this to Kano, they have decamped even before the election because of the attitude of Peter Obi towards them.”
Akinwale expressed satisfaction over Obi’s defeat in the presidential election, criticizing Obi as a tribal politician unfit for the country’s leadership.
He stated, “I am happy that he did not win, not because of anything but because that kind of man should not be given the responsibility of a very serious leadership of this country. A country that is not religious. A country that is not a country of a tribe.
“Hadn’t I not talked about his altitude before the leaked conversation (with Bishop David Oyedepo), people would have said I only linked it to the audio because I did not tell the world, it was two days I told the world about his altitude that this leaked audio came out.
“And I observed also that he did not go to any mosque nor go to any Muslim gathering to campaign. These are the things that I put together and say this one is not tolerant at all.”
