Obedient Rally Didn’t Threaten Us – Tumsah

Coordinator of the Tinubu-Shettimah Support Group, North East, Tijani Tumsah has disclosed that the Labour Party’s October 1 rally by supporters of the party’s presidential candidate, Peter Obi, also known as ‘Obedients’, did not threaten the APC.

He stated this following yesterday’s APC rally titled the “five million” solidarity walk in support of the presidential candidate of the party, Bola Tinubu and his running mate, Kashim Shettima, in Lagos State, which was organised by the Chairman of Lagos State Parks and Garages Management, Musiliu Akinsanya, popularly called MC Oluomo. Naija News gathered that in his reaction, Tumsah, on a Channels TV programme, said the Lagos rally signifies a popular ground swell of support towards the APC and is not going to be matched by any of the political parties. He said Lagos is an important ground for the APC and by no means was the ruling party threatened by previous rallies carried out by other parties, adding that rallies can be held by parties as much as they want but it is the party with the most support that would most turn out multitude on the street. The former interim secretary of the APC furthered stated that the APC as a party has a great ground of support from the generality of the public in Nigeria, and as such the kind of yesterday’s five million solidarity walk can also be duplicated and replicated in many states of the federation. He explained that the crowd is an indication of support and that “I can also assure you that the ground game, the door-to-door movement and all the support groups that are all over, will make the difference in terms of voting capacity or votes gathered by  thel parties as we go.” Speaking about the financial implications of such huge rallies to the party and how the crowd is pulled, he maintained that most of the spending is voluntary and that the APC has registered members who can always be relied upon to show up for party events like rallies and voting purposes, “so it is difficult for a party that just came out now to gather many people as we can as a party in APC.” He advanced that individuals, party cells and also self-sacrifices by members of the party are the major ways of financing rallies of such magnitude and that most rallies are done voluntarily and on the basis of call-ups, as members are always ready to show up for the party they believe in. Responding to how the trend of youths in Lagos and its diversity can affect APC votes in the state, Tumsah pointed out that in politics it is difficult to say anything is in the bag until the day the votes are counted, “but we have an indication that Lagos is within an area we can rely on to support the APC and history has shown also that APC wins election in Lagos state, that isn’t to say there won’t be a good showing for other parties as it has always happened in the past.” He, however, noted that in every state, issues matter because they will always be a decisive instrument by which people vote and with that “I can see APC having the urge in most of the states in Nigeria.” Giving his take on the signing of the peace accord by candidates and how it applies to members of the APC, Tumsah remarked that a candidate signing a peace accord indicates that his followers agree to whatever he appends his name and signature on. Also to tackle the issue of violence, he said there is a disciplinary committee in each cell of the party and at each level to deal with non-compliant members who result to violence, “APC does not condone violence, Nigerians are moving to a more issue-based way of making their political expressions known.”

This article was originally published on Naija News