Babatunde Raji Fashola, the Minister of Works and Housing said that the three major opposition candidates in the presidential election contributed to the victory of the President-Elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Fashola said this during an appearance on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics. He said Obi, Atiku, and Kwankwaso gave Tinubu the victory over their refusal to form an alliance ahead of the election.
Tinubu had in the recently concluded polls polled 8,794,726 votes to defeat Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who got 6,984,520 votes, while Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) polled 6,101,533 to come third and Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) finished fourth with 1,496,687 votes.
The former Governor of Lagos State said they made the 2023 presidential election easier for Tinubu to win since the three candidates split from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) after the 2019 presidential election.
Fasola said politics is a game of numbers and numbers have arithmetic equations which are additions and multiplications. He said APC was adding and multiplying as a result of some PDP governors like Cross River, Ebonyi, Zamfara who had come to join APC, hence PDP was dividing and subtracting
“So, the major contenders against us in this election – NNPP, PDP, Labour Party, their candidates, were in the same party in 2019. They lost by almost four million votes. So, having now divided that inadequate, insufficient ticket into three, how was it going to add up into an electoral victory?” he said.
“So, they handed away the presidential ticket by dividing their powers. Not only did they divide, they now subtracted with the G5 governors. So, it was bad mathematics,” Fashola added.
Fashola stated that Peter Obi of the Labour Party, LP, had in 2019 run as Atiku’s running mate in the presidential polls, however, the former Anambra State governor left the PDP in 2022 to secure the ticket of the Labour Party.
Similarly, he said that Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party, NNPP, a former governor of Kano State, in March 2022, dumped the PDP for a second time in eight years.
According to him, he had first left the party in November 2013 and joined the APC. He, however, rejoined the PDP in July 2018 only to leave four years later to lead the NNPP.
Fashola said it is these inconsistencies that saw Tinubu emerge as winner of the 2023 presidential polls.