.’My senatorial ambition can’t be compared with love for Nigeria’
The Director General of the Obi-Datti Presidential Campaign Council, Balogun Akin Osuntokun has revealed that he turned down an offer to lead the campaign for one of the top three presidential candidates to work for Peter Obi’s aspiration which he said is most beneficial to Nigeria.
The DG who said that his position is sacrificial also maintained that not even his senatorial ambition was enough to stand between him and what he believes was for the interest of a united Nigeria.
Speaking at the campaign office, Thursday in his first day in office Balogun Osuntokun said,
“every ardent observer of the Nigerian political space and recent trend of events will attest to the teeming organic support the emergence of His Excellency, Peter Obi as the presidential candidate of the Labour Party has received across the country. This is undeniable a pointer to the fact that Nigerians have anchored their hope on the ensuing victory of Peter Obi in the coming 2023 presidential election. My team and I hereby promise to work assiduously hard to ensure victory for the Obi Datti ticket come February 2023.
“We are not oblivious of the magnitude of work required of us to deliver on the promise so declared. We are braced for it, and equally find solace in divine guidance, the counsel of our elders, and the unflinching support of well meaning Nigerians that are eager to see the Nigerian socioeconomic status quo upturned, and our beloved country progress like other progressing countries all over the world. I am confident that under my leadership, the campaign will excel. Challenges will surely come, but we will surmount them as one united family.
“May I use this evident opportunity to encourage our supporters across the country and in the diaspora never to relent, but to continue with their amiable support at different levels, in different quarters, and through their respective approaches. The race has not ended, the finish line is in sight, and the prize in assured. We shall be victorious, and we shall celebrate!
“I wish to appreciate the trust reposed in me by the leadership of Labour Party and the advisory body of Obi Datti presidential campaign to steer this ship even as we sail through stormy political waters in Nigeria. We will get to our destination in delight.
“The campaign promises to continue the tradition of engaging with politics devoid of acrimony, and to always push the boundaries of issue based campaign as we lead the advent of a new Nigerian political terrain.”
Asked why he chose to work for Peter Obi even as a senatorial candidate of another political party and the morality behind it, Osuntokun said, “I am one of the few politicians who have been morally consistent…I have been writing columns and any body that has been reading me will know that the position I am today is in consistence with what I have been preaching all along.
“I was directly invited to come and lead one of the campaigns by one of the three leading presidential candidates and I declined. It was too painful for me to decline because the candidate in question, I have a very good personal relationship with him but because of my principle, it was a test of my own moral position because a man is not tested until you are confronted with the challenge for which you have to respond.
“The position I have taken in the past decades in Nigeria is a sacrificial positions. I didn’t make myself the DG of this campaign neither did I make myself South-West coordinator of the campaign. It came out of my reputation, out of my own belief of what is good for Nigeria.
“Of the four presidential tickets, which one would you say objectively is for the interest of Nigeria. Two of them contradicts the idea of nationhood which rotation is expected to promote. The other one went cynically for Muslim Muslim ticket, is that in the interest of Nigeria? Why should I be drawn back just because of the senatorial ambition. I have taken a very conspicuous position on who should become the next president of Nigeria. In this fourth Republic, there have been this fluidity of movement across the boundaries, many people leave PDP to go to APC. Many of the PDP governors supported APC in 2015 while they were still PDP governors. There was an extreme situation were a sitting vice president elected under PDP took the presidential ticket of another party to contest against the government for which he was the vice president. The position I have taken is a sacrificial position, I have to stand for what is right, to fight an intolerable status quo, it comes with a lot of sacrifice.”
