……..news of my illness is fake – Tinubu
National Leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu said on Friday that PDP presidential candidate Alhaji Atiku Abubakar abandoned Lagos State when he was approached over the seizure of local government allocation as the sitting Vice President of the country.
Tinubu said this in Abuja when he received the representatives of traditional rulers from South West States led by Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi.
The former governor of the Centre of Excellence, who said his State was punished for being innovative, expressed happiness that President Muhammadu Buhari was currently leading and championing progressive development in the country.
He said, “Atiku was Vice President of this country when the local government allocation for Lagos state was seized. When we led a protest to Atiku then, he said go away. Go and comply. Without those allocation, you cannot bring development. When we said we needed power to power Lagos and the industrial base in our region, they said no.
“They were taking away N250 million from our allocation every month for being innovative and creative. Everywhere we turn, they rejected us and punished us. But we never gave up. Today, we are in that progressive development championed and led by President Muhammadu Buhari. Thank you for not looking back. Thank you for visiting and encouraging him.”
He voiced happiness over the support of the traditional rulers, saying “I am very happy and proud of the very promising situation. When you have the endorsement of your Royal fathers, it means you have the people with you and the voice of the people is the voice of God. I am elated.”
On the report that he was rushed to the hospital after slumping, Tinubu dismissed it as “Fake news”, saying “Whoever is manufacturing it, you better not believe them.”
On the message brought by the traditional rulers, the APC national leader said they sued for peaceful election.
He said, “The Royal fathers spoke of the need for a peace election. When you have the believe that you can get a proper result, you work hard because you want peace. When you believe that you can win, you don’t want violence. We all love our children, our brothers and our followers and none of us would want our followers to become sacrificial lambs.
“We won’t encourage violent disruption of any election because we are confidence of winning. Those who are crying wolf before the election have already accepted defeat before the election as far as I am concerned.”
Tinubu, who also spoke on the report over the absence of governors at the meeting of the presidential campaign council, dismissed the information as fake news.
“That is negative and fake news too. The point is, the governors had to stay back home because we all don’t have to converge in one place to decide certain modalities when we can easily go back to them on what was discussed and what we expect from your state. That is what we call structuring in an election. There are some jelly fish reporters around Nigeria these days,” Tinubu said.
Ooni of Ife, in his remarks, appealed to Nigerians to work for peaceful elections.
“My message to Nigerians in this time of election is peace, peace and peaceful coexistence all the way. The power of every Nigerian and every electorate lies in the thumb. As traditional rulers, we are father to all and in playing that role, we pray that there should be peace in this country.
“That is what we are preaching and it is very important to all of us to know than Nigeria is greater than any of us. We should continue to preach peace and identify with good things that will be beneficial to the nation. That is why we are here,” Oba Ogunwusi said.
