Human rights lawyer and former chairman of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Prof Chidi Odinkalu, has said that the presence of President Muhammadu Buhari at the campaigns of the All Progressives Congress (APC) is an ill wind that blows the presidential candidate of the party, Mr. Bola Tinubu no good.
Odinkalu said in an interview that the president had been making statements which do not sell Tinubu.
“The president is campaigning with Tinubu and telling the people ‘don’t vote for a fraudulent person.’ The question for me is: does Tinubu want to continue presenting the president for him to keep saying the kind of things he is saying at the rallies, things that cut both ways and impossibly actually don’t reflect quite well on his candidate, it seems to me. I also don’t see how Buhari necessarily sells Bola Tinubu as a candidate,” he said.
For Tinubu to make any progress, Odinkalu said the APC presidential candidate should give Buhari’s record a wide berth because even the people in the president’s Katsina State do not reckon with his achievements.
“The only thing that helps the APC candidate is to distance himself from the Buhari record because not even in Buhari’s own state, Katsina, does Buhari come out as very popular at this particular time.
“The state has been taken over by bandits and people are wondering if they have a president from their state and bandits are overrunning them, then why is he president? Other Nigerians are wondering if this man is president and he cannot even save his state, how can he save us?
“So, I don’t think that wheeling out President Buhari right now is necessarily a service to the APC presidential candidate. I could, of course, be wrong, but I would like to be persuaded that I am wrong because I don’t see it,” he added.
On who will likely win the presidential election Odinkalu said the contest is a three-horse race among Tinubu, Mr. Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Mr. Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP).
He ruled out the candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), Mr. Musa Kwankwaso from making any impact at the poll.
“It seems to me quite clearly that one of Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi or Bola Tinubu will be our president in May. That seems to me quite clear. I don’t think that Rabiu Kwankwaso, realistically, has a shot, even if he is likely to do well in Kano State. Obviously, Kano has never decided on the presidency as such. I believe that one of the three people…is likely to be the next president. I don’t think it is right for me to venture beyond that,” he said.
Odinkalu further stated that he does not belief in the poll results bandied about saying some of them (polls) are “pushed”
“For instance, somebody comes up with a poll saying 38 per cent of rural areas are in favour of a particular person and 34 per cent are in favour of another person. That is quite nonsensical because the person does not say what rural areas are. If and when they define rural areas, the poll unravels as being manifestly idiotic. So, I don’t place much stock in most of those polls.
“The other reason for that is also that even when you look at those polls, even the push polls themselves have got a high proportion of undecided voters. So, it is difficult to then make dispositive judgments based on polls with undecided voters with 30 percentage points out of 100. That does not make sense,” he added.
