The Lagos State Peoples Democratic Party’s candidate in the coming 2023 governorship election, Adediran Olajide, popularly known as, Jandor has boasted of how he would defeat the incumbent governor of Lagos State, Babajide Sanwo-Olu.
Speaking in an interview with Punch newspaper, Jandor said Sanwo-Olu is not in the picture of the aspirants who could challenge him in the contest.
Asked if he has the popularity to challenge Sanwo-Olu in the race, he replied, “Maybe you want to turn the table and ask if Sanwo-Olu has what it takes to challenge me, because this election is beyond Sanwo-Olu. Sanwo-Olu is not even in the picture at all, even as a sitting governor. Just remove what makes Sanwo-Olu and you have nothing. In our case, we have a huge support base at the grassroots. This is something no one can take away from us, if not, they would have bought it with their moneybags. It is just like a penalty shootout for us. It is good news for our people that they are returning a lame duck. It is a good thing that they are bringing back the badly damaged sitting governor. It makes the job easier. Let’s see how they go about it in the coming election.
On what makes Sanwo-Olu a lame duck as he said, Jando said, “All of us know. The truth of the matter is that what do you make of a sitting governor who can’t on his own say that he wants to run for a second term until somebody asks him to declare? The moment you remove that from him, he is nothing. Also, the others that just came out to run, is like somebody said to them why are you keeping quiet? I think governance is beyond all that; you must have conviction and first believe in yourself before people will believe in you. All of these guys never envisioned to govern; never envisioned to be in office; they never prepared to be there; somebody just called them and said, ‘You, come and be’ and that person kept controlling them. For us, I want to be an independent governor, not the one that will require an approval before we get something done. Those are the things that differentiate us from them. Our own aspiration is to give Lagos that breath of fresh air. It is about time we do something else in the city of Lagos and not just recycling failed politicians.
The 44-year-old journalist, also spoke on what Lagosian should be expecting from him if elected.
His words“ The moment the PDP gets the stage, the moment I emerge as the governor of the state, there is this thing that will speak in the heads of all Lagosians that we have something new and fresh. Fresh in the sense that our system is badly damaged as it is. It is at the behest and mood of an individual who will say and everybody will do. We want Lagos State to return to the people of Lagos. That alone is a whole lot.
“Look at the serious incident in the #EndSARS protests. If the governor of a state was not able to make a decision on his own and somebody behind needed to tell him, ‘You are a fool. Is that what I told you? My friend, go and do this’, and then the governor came back and said, ‘Yes, I called soldiers but I didn’t call them to go and shoot’. But one wonders whether soldiers will go and clap at the protest ground in Lekki. Several knee jerk policies that speak volume to the kind of people we are electing into offices, because they never envisaged governing, but somebody just brought them up and said go and fill that role. That is what differentiates us. There is nowhere I haven’t been to in the last few years I have been on this journey. There is no local government that I have not been to, but we have a state governor who does not know the state he is governing. It is embarrassing.”