The various Tinubu support groups who worked for the emergence of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu have voiced out their disappointment with the President who they alleged has sidelined them in the scheme of things especially as related to appointments so far in this administration.
They gathered in their hundreds at the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, on Thursday with leaders and members of the various grassroots mobilization groups who worked very hard to support the president in the difficult and hard fought 2023 presidential election.
Most of the speakers at the event reeled out the great sacrifices they had to make to sell the president to Nigerians to enable him emerge victorious against two formidable opponents, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar of PDP and former Governor Peter Obi of Labour Party.
It was a hard fought election and the support groups’ contributions to the victory of the President cannot be overemphasized. The Muslim-Muslim ticket was a hard sell to many Nigerians.
Many of the speakers stated how much of time and personal resources they committed individually and as a group to the campaign efforts of the Tinubu Campaign Council and the general efforts that culminated in the eventual victory of President Tinubu.
They claimed that they were the foot soldiers of the Tinubu Presidential Campaign Council who went to the grassroots to campaign from village to village, house to house, individual to individual, organization to organization, religious leaders, women and youth groups throughout the country to convince Nigerians to vote Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
“But when the victory was won and the president was sworn into office, we began to see those people who were nowhere to be found during the busy and difficult days of the campaign being given appointments here and there but those of us who stuck our necks out for the president are being neglected up till now”, one of the speakers lamented.
Another one bitterly complained that “The reward system of this administration is extremely faulty and warped. Suddenly people who were not even in Nigeria during the election were being given appointments including Ministerial portfolios. Those who are not members of the All Progressives Congress or who recently decamped from PDP are being given priority over those of us who worked tirelessly in rain and sunshine with some even losing their lives and injured in the process yet we are being treated like trash. That’s not the Bola Tinubu we know. Something must be going wrong somewhere and we have to cry out.”
He further said “This is not an attempt to be confrontational to the president, it is just our way of drawing his attention to the injustice of this situation for immediate resolution because it has a dire implication for his 2027 ambition”, he concluded.
The support group leaders mentioned how they were present day and night for 64 days rallying at the Unity Fountain in Abuja in support of the President until May 29th that the he was eventually inaugurated. Some supporters of Peter Obi had taken over the Unity Fountain to call for the inauguration of the president to be stopped while a government of national unity was formed pending a fresh election because they felt that their candidate was rigged out of the election.
A woman who prefers anonymity lamented that she was heavily indebted after the Unity Fountain rallies because she was unable to fully pay all the women and girls who she mobilized to dance at the rallies daily and had to go into hiding after the event. But she wasn’t appreciated at all by the President.
The Tinubu Support Groups mobilized themselves in large numbers for 64 days calling for the preservation of democracy and that the President’s inauguration cannot be stopped or date of hand over postponed. Their daily presence at the Unity Fountain drew widespread public and media attention as the support groups in their thousands turned the Abuja Unity Fountain into a political Mecca where many prominent political leaders including Senators, serving and former Governors, political heavyweights across the country went to pay them solidarity visits.
It was a combination of fanfare and serious intellectual business as agenda setting debates were held daily at the Unity Fountain. The Unity Fountain rallies were organized and supervised by Tosin Adeyanju and Dr. A. A. Maiagogo who was the Director of Community Support of the Tinubu-Shettima Presidential Campaign Council.
