Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos state worships Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu like a god. He has reasons to. The Lagos strongman and APC National Leader made him governor of the Aquatic State as Lagos is widely known, despite the efforts of then Governor Akinwumi Ambode to stay in office for another four years.
Ambode, a beneficiary of Tinubu’s godfatherism had broken ranks with his benefactor who ensured that then governor never returned to the Alausa, Ikeja Government House. In his place, Tinubu commandeered his supporters to vote for Sanwo-Olu, a political neophyte, barely known in Lagos’s political space.
Since he became governor in 2019, Governor Sanwo-Olu has done everything to please his mentor, including making outlandish statements in favor of the former governor’s presidential ambition. The governor has recently said Tinubu is the best candidate to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari in his goodwill message to the former governor on his 69th birthday
Ogedengbe, who is also the General Overseer of Overcomers Pentecostal Prayer Church, Lagos said efforts are in top gear to ensure that the next governor would be a Muslim. Ogedengbe, the former Senior Special Assistant to the Lagos State Governor on Christian Religion, said he was among those who ensured that Governor Ambode, a Christian succeeded former Governor Babatunde Fashola in 2015, nothing that the gentleman arrangement will not be breached.
We Christian leaders and ministers hail administrations in the state since 1999, but we will insist that Sanwo-Olu’s successor should be a Muslim in the interest of justice and equity, ”Ogedengbe said.
Since Ogendengbe made the statement last week, the magazine learnt that Governor Sanwo-Olu and some of his aides have become uneasy as the comment did not go down well with them. “Making such a sensitive political statement at this time does not augur well for all of us, particularly at a period when Asiwaju is trying to galvanise all his supporters across the country for this presidential ambition,” a close confidant of Governor Sanwo Olu told the magazine, noting however that he was not authorized to speak on the issue and that he must remained anonymous.
According to the source, Governor Sanwo-olu “is facing governance for now and has left the issue of his second term to be determined by our leader, Asiwaju and other party chieftains in the state. What is paramount to the hardworking governor is to take the state to the next level based on the brief he received from the Leader after he succeeded Ambode.”
Close sources told the magazine that Tinubu will not speak on the issue until he has successfully settled the matter over his rumored presidential ambition. But those that are close to him say Dr Obafemi Hamzat, the Deputy Governor and Tinubu’s son, Deji are on the card in case the former governor succumbed to pressure from Muslims that one of the should be governor in three years time.
Meanwhile, another source close to Tinubu said the governorship “in Asiwaju’s contemplation is not a family affair, so the suggestion that his son is one of those penciled down for the job is not true. But he will speak on the issue when the time is ripe.”
