2023 election: Labour Party couldn’t have performed better, says Okupe

Okupe, who expressed strong belief in Tinubu’s reforms, said that the president’s policies would begin to yield results from the second year of his administration.

The former LP chieftain said that Tinubu had impressed him not only as a politician but as a technocrat: “a man that is capable of deep thinking.”

He said that Tinubu had development ideologies and policies at his fingertips. “This thing, you don’t learn it. It’s a gift.”

The 72-year-old politician said that Tinubu was like the late Premier of the defunct Western Region, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, with great ideas about public policies.

Describing Tinubu as a reformer, Okupe said it was “total nonsense” to say that the president came to the office without a plan.

“I have worked with two past presidents. I have studied other presidents closely from a very close point.

“I do not know any Nigerian president from 1960 to date who has come more armed and better prepared for governance than this gentleman.

“Unfortunately for him, he has come into government at a very terrible and awful time,” Okupe said.

Noting that it would be unfair to hold Tinubu accountable for the ills of 40 years, Okupe said that the president needed a minimum of two years for some of his policies to begin to produce results.

He said that just like Singapore and Malaysia transited from third world to first world through determination, Tinubu was determined to move the country to greater heights.

“It is going to be a couple of years of pain and hardship, but he is doing what other presidents for the last 10 years or 20 years have refused to do.

“The choice he had was to run and was to come into governance and just continue business as usual.

“By the time he came to the government, 98 per cent of our revenue generated was being used to pay debt,” Okupe said.

He called on Nigerians to support the President to fix the problems slowing down the progress of the country

 

(NAN).