The Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 election, Peter Obi has called on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and other elected public office holders to lead by example.
Obi made the call on Thursday in Awka, Anambra State, against the background of the outrage being expressed by Nigerians over the outlandish display of power by President Tinubu during a recent visit to Lagos State.
Diran Onifade, Media Director of the Obi/Datti team, in a statement, recalled how President Tinubu during the visit was escorted by an unprecedented 124-vehicle convoy, describing it as “mindless embarrassing exhibitionism.”
According to Obi, “Not since the creation of Nigeria by the British has such mindless and embarrassing exhibitionism been purveyed by a politician. Not even the military known for their brash and unbridled display of raw naked power dared to exhibit such recklessness.”
Obi who said he had yet to see a video footage of the Tinubu 124-vehicle convoy, added that “leaders in Nigeria must lead by example.”
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According to him, “The present Nigeria requires that all those who serve and lead must do so by example. Their behaviour and their public conduct must be in consonance with what the society requires today.
“We cannot continue to preach for the people to sacrifice without sacrificing too. The sacrifice must now start from the leaders, visibly, measurably at all times because the people are suffering; and we must now be at the forefront of the suffering.”
The statement added that “Obi’s call for sacrifice by Nigerian leaders is coming about two weeks after Tinubu in a Democracy Day address on June 12, 2023, called on Nigerians to sacrifice more in the wake of the removal of subsidy on petrol by the Federal Government, which had not only pushed the cost of petrol up but had equally led to skyrocketing prices of goods and services.
“The Obi-Datti Media like millions of Nigerians whose sense of decency has been affronted by Asiwaju Tinubu’s unbridled tendency to flaunt power and position, joins our presidential candidate in pointing the hypocrisy inherent in Tinubu’s action.
“For a man who promised to cut the cost of governance to be moving around with an over-bloated convoy of security details and aides, surely speaks volumes of his ‘do what I say and not what I do’ attitude,” he said.
