Ololade Adeyanju/
Former Governor of Ogun State, Otunba Gbenga Daniel has disclosed that he is under pressure to join the race for the presidential election ahead of the 2022 poll.
Daniel made the disclosure when the editorial board of Penpushing media paid him a courtesy call. He said that the agitation from his supporters was that he is more qualified to contest the presidency.
He said, “What my people are asking me to do is even more than the senatorial seat. Some people are saying, your profile; who are those who want to be President today, that you cannot compare probably with?
“So, if X, Y, Z, some of them who have even become governor after you, which means that if effectively you do a ranking order, you can say you are their senior in politics. So, why are you, their Oga, not saying you want to be President?”
He, however, explained that the country’s presidency is not for the swiftest. Going down the memory lane, he said it was on record that, it was not those who worked hard politically that have been ruling Nigeria.
“But I decided that Nigerian Presidency, and things like that, is not for the swiftest. It is not for the fastest. I am contended to, in my own little way, serve my own senatorial district, add value to what government is doing, and so and so on. And that is where we are today,” he said. “I’m saying that from contemporary experience, it is not that it seems that it is something positive because it means that people who worked so hard historically have not attained it.
“And if you start from the First Republic, where you have flamboyant politicians like Maitama Sule and all that say they want to be President, the great Zik of Africa could not get it, the great Awo did not get it, one way or the other.
“The same thing repeated itself in the Second Republic when it was Shagari, who wanted to go to Senate. Maybe now that I want to go to Senate, maybe I will follow Shagari. It was Shagari who said I want to go to Senate. Against the hardest working politicians at that time and all those people, it’s Shagari who emerged, and that’s the Second Republic.
“And now military interregnum, and then it’s Baba (former President Olusegun Obasanjo) who, I think, said the people first came to him when he came out of prison, he said they’re crazy.
“That one who emerged after Baba was my colleague in the executive. Yar Adua, who just wanted to go back to Katsina and then he didn’t want it, he’s the one who emerged, and the one who said he had no shoes (ex-President Goodluck Jonathan) emerged and so on.”
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