The Minister of Science and Technology, Senator Olorunnimbe Mamora, has dismissed Peter Obi’s chances of winning the 2023 presidential election.
Mamora likened the Labour Party’s flagbearer’s candidacy to independent candidacy in America which has never produced a president.
“What I see, with all due respect is what you can call independent candidacy in Labour, and to the best of my knowledge even in America, no independent candidate has ever won the presidency. They can win in the Senate or House of Representatives but not in the presidential, so it will be a miracle of the century.
“I won’t dismiss it (support for Peter Obi) but it doesn’t seem to me that it will be as such as would cause havoc in this system at the end of the day. This is because we do our checks on a regular basis. We look at the spread; we look at the capacity on the ground. You see, you cannot underrate the role of structures in politics and particularly in elections because this is the reality. There are many logistics involved in electioneering,” the former Senator representing Lagos Central said on Channels Television Political Paradigm.
Asked if he sees the support the Labour Party and Peter Obi are getting from the Labour Unions and the youths as nothing, Mamora replied, “The same way all these people are saying they will back Peter Obi is the same way they are saying they will back other candidates, especially those frontline candidates.”
The Minister said while he is not underrating other contenders in the presidential contest, his party’s candidate, Bola Tinubu, remains the best.
“I said with all due respect, no one should underrate anyone. In a contest, you don’t underrate anyone but with all due respect to all these front liners, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi and Kwankwaso, of course, those are the faces we see when you tune into any channel.
“So, you cannot underrate but I am saying that in spite of that and with all due respect to other candidates, he (Tinubu) is still the number one candidate to beat, that’s the point I am making.”
Mamora said the emergence of the Labour Party and the New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP) to challenge the two main parties APC and PDP is part of the growth in the system but insisted that their efforts won’t be enough to win the election.
“It is part of the growth in the system as far as I am concerned but again don’t forget that is just the way it is in all these other countries. Go to the UK, it is not as if you don’t have other parties but we’re talking of the Labour Party and the Conservatives, isn’t it? Go to America we are talking about Democrats and The Republicans.”