Immediate-past national secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Iyiola Omisore has revealed how he delivered President Bola Tinubu to become the party’s presidential candidate.
Omisore made this known while speaking on ‘Inside Sources’, a programme hosted by veteran journalist and former presidential spokesman Laolu Akande on Channels Television.
The former chairman of the Senate Appropriations committee said he outsmarted all those who were trying to have a presidential candidate from their zones.
“In politics, everybody has their mindsets. We came from different (geopolitical) zones to the NWC that time, representing different interests,” Omisore said.
“I was the most senior member of the party in the south-west and my mandate was to deliver the south-west for the presidency.
“Somebody from south-south too, his own mandate was to deliver south for the presidency. I want to assume so.
So, my own way was to get to my destination which I have gotten to today. The way and manner I did my journey is between me and God.
“I can’t castigate anybody who tried to be smart but if you want to be smart and I outsmarted you, to God be the glory. But the point is that my mission was to deliver the south-west presidency which we are today.”
Omisore also decried the nation’s slow pace of development which he tied to what he described as ‘geometric growth rate’ of the Nigerian population.
“As much as we’re evolving, both in nation, we’re evolving as well in the population. Unfortunately for us in this country, our population is a geometrical in mathematics, It’s a growing at geometrical progression.
“Some other nations grow at arithmetic progression, but our is growing geometrically. So, and the run of the population of vis-a-vis facilities becomes a challenge.
“So now we have 7,000 megawatts of a transmission line in about five, six years ago. In any nation, if we give it maybe one million population, you add it to it, but now it becomes deficient. The issue of data statistics versus religion.
“People don’t want to be counted. You say how many children you have, they’d be afraid to tell you. Maybe you are a witch, obviously, I want to kill your children. Perhaps this helps to plan. Where there’s no data, you cannot plan, basically.
“And you cannot fault the government for this one. We are going to fault ourselves. And it will be due to cultural issues.” Omisore said