Interrogating Osinbajo’s declaration speech, By Daniel Bwala

I do not think that Asiwaju is afraid of Professor Yemi because in the coming days, what people are going to do is that; they’re going to interrogate the claims of any contestants and contenders not pretenders against their evidence.

If you take up Osinbajo’s speech, He categorized his speech into four places; The Economy, servanthood and loyalty, participation in security intervention and the idea of continuing on what president Muhammadu Buhari started.

In the coming days when we start to interrogate that, Yemi Osinbajo will not be near Asiwaju e.g The economy, which happens to be the strongest strength of Professor Yemi. That is the only aspect of governance that the constitution devolve to the Vice president, but throughout the seven years Professor Yemi piloted the affairs of the economy of this country, Unemployment rose from 9% to 35%, inflation rose from 9% to 25%, dollar jumped from 197 per Naira to 580, fuel from #87 to #162 per liter, GDP declined by 41 billion dollars.

Anyone who knows President Buhari knows that he does not interfere whenever he gives out responsibilities, that is why he’s being criticized as an individual who doesn’t supervise someone.

The biggest strength of Professor Yemi Osinbajo is his weakest point. Juxtaposing that with Asiwaju, He has not been able to govern anywhere since he left Lagos as the Governor, he can only be judged to this effect. Everyone knows how he turned the IGR. On the economy alone, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu will flaw Osinbajo.

Prof. Yemi talking about his servanthood and loyalty, In the coming days, a lot of people with take a different opinion to that, and how his office in the last seven years was ran like a parallel government, to the point that it was alleged at a time that anytime Buhari transmits power to him and travel abroad, he will go ahead and appoint people into critical places where the president is already considering via a file on his table. It has happened numerous times.

During his time as the Vice President, any executive order that did not emanate from his office on the instruction of the president, he has never supported that. Even when Buhari was sick, in London, when people were putting pressure to come and resign, there were people who said Osinbajo did little or nothing to counter that as against those times when people rose against him and he would be actively involved in countering that, this is when it comes to loyalty.

When it comes to intervention in security, there are Christian communities that would tell you that Osinbajo has several privileges on several occasions during the pendency of this presidency, where power was transmitted and he had the opportunity to negotiate and release Leah Sharibu and intervene in places where Christians were madly wounded, Yemi Osinbajo did not do that. The reason they said he did not was because, around those times, he exercised the same power in giving appointments to his friends that are now participating in pushing his agenda for presidency.

He also spoke about continuing what the president started, in fact this is where people would say he wants to buy the emotion of the president, because any president in his Secind term would want anybody that want to succeed him to continue what he has started, but people would tell you that a man who could not be loyal to a man who introduced him into politics, can never be loyal to complete what his principal has started.

A classical case was when Yar’adua died, his 8-points agenda was thrown into the window by Goodluck Jonathan and a different thing was started. And If you look at the antecedent of Yemi Osinbajo as people would tell you, that it is a lip service, and there’s no evidence to suggest that he will complete what President Buhari have started.

–Bwala is a Lawyer & Member, Lincolns Inn, London.