…Atiku’s camp jittery
Hours after the end of the Tinubu Meets Organised Private Sector summit in Lagos, yesterday, numbing shivers must still be coursing through the veins of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, and his co-travellers.
Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, presidential candidate, Tuesday, met with leaders of the organised private sector at the Eko Hotel, Lagos, to interact and intimate and allow them to interrogate his action plan for Nigeria. President Muhammadu Buhari had on October 21 unveiled Tinubu’s action plan in Abuja.
After some barnstorming, the summit, according to Hon James Faleke, Secretary of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, became expedient to allow Tinubu to share his vision for a better Nigeria with various economic actors and allow for a critical examination of the policy options contained in the plan.
Representing the OPS at the well-attended event were its leading lights like the president of the Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote; chairman of the UBA Group, Tony Elumelu; chairman of Zenith Bank, Jim Ovia; a former CEO of Access Bank, Aigboje Aig-Imokhuede; and the chief executive officer of Access Bank, Herbert Wigwe among many other high profile players and stakeholders.
Indeed, it was a convergence of the real money men, the pullers of the levers of the Nigerian economy. Keen watchers of that event were unanimous in their understanding that these key players had already pitched their tent where they believed their interests would be best served.
This point was clinically driven home by Dr Reuben Abati, a PDP member, a former presidential spokesman, and lead presenter of the fiery Arise TV Morning Show. He distilled the import and importance of the OPS leaders’ presence at the Tinubu summit, saying, “The strategists of Bola Tinubu are doing a good job so far. They are making him take the narrative from the other party and own it. As for the Organised Private Sector, they behave like prostitutes. In every election, they would be friends with everybody, but at the end of the day, they would make up their minds because they are not into politics; they are into business.”
Abati, a former PDP deputy governorship candidate in Ogun State, continued, “Let nobody deceive themselves; these guys who set up businesses need the state for import, export, and foreign exchange. So, to a large extent, they determine what happens.” Therefore, he added, “If Corporate Nigeria does not want anybody to emerge the President of Nigeria, that person will not emerge. That is the gospel truth.”
A former key player in the corporate world who retired as a treasurer at Exxon Mobil, Tinubu spoke in the language the OPS echelon understands. According to him, a viable economy requires collaboration between the political and business communities, saying, “My experiences in both the private sector and elective office afford me a special appreciation of the economic potency that close collaboration between government and the business community can bring.”
He told his guests that growing the GDP would be critical to reducing the poverty rates in the country. “We shall bring the nation’s industrial policy to life. Key to this is our aim to create major and minor industrial hubs in each geopolitical zone. We shall not be satisfied by bolstering traditional sectors.
“We will foster productive excellence in new areas such as light manufacturing and the Nollywood entertainment sector. Through active participation in the digital economy, we shall make Nigeria a leader, instead of a bystander, in the fourth industrial revolution,” Tinubu said.
