Politics
Orji Kalu Says Tinubu Is Not A Threat To His 2023 Presidential Bid
Presidential hopeful, Senator Orji Uzor Kalu says the former governor of Lagos State, Bola Tinubu is not a threat to his plan to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari in 2023.
Kalu said this during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Friday, February 4, 2022.
During the interview, the former governor of Abia state spoke about his plan for Nigeria if he is elected into the highest political office in the country.
When asked if he sees Tinubu as a threat, Kalu said he and the national leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) are contemporaries, adding that politics is about people and not money.
He said, No! and I am not a threat to his ambition. By the time we meet in Eagles Square, this issue will be settled.
“Mind you, politics is not only about money; it is about the people you are going to govern … the people of the north-west, the people of north-east, the people of north-central, the people of the south-east, the people of the south-west, and the people of south-south, and we have the people. I can move the people and the people are with me.”
Both Kalu and Tinubu are chieftains of the APC and served as governors between 1999 and 2007.
It would be recalled that in November last year, Tinubu and Kalu met behind closed doors amid speculations that the former Lagos governor was eyeing the presidency.
But barely two months after their meeting, Tinubu announced his presidential ambition.
Although Kalu admitted that when Tinubu visited him, he told the APC leader that he had no plan to join the presidential race, he, however, said certain circumstances prompted him to have a rethink.
He said, “I told Tinubu that I was not going to run, that is the truth,” he revealed. “It was circumstance from the south-east, south-west, north-west, north-central, and north-east that made me decide to join the race. I was governor with him (Tinubu), there is nothing difficult in challenging anybody.
“We are all going to meet at the Eagle Square, and we will square it out there. There is no difficulty. I am the only political businessman that is first recognised as a billionaire, and I am not sure that there is anything those people can do, in terms of money, that I cannot do. I don’t think they can speak to anybody in Nigeria or in the world that I cannot speak to.”
The Chief Whip of the Senate also said his presidential ambition has not been discussed with President Muhammadu Buhari.
The former governor said the last time he met the president, he only discussed issues of national interest with him.
