A former presidential candidate, Professor Pat Utomi, has told of his relationship with President Bola Tinubu, which incurred him the wrath of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo at a time the latter was the President.
Utomi is currently having a run-in with the Department of State Security Services, DSS, who dragged him to court over his formation of a shadow government on grounds that the act was intended to create chaos and destabilise the country.
In an interview with The Sun, the Professor of Political Economy and Management said he has come a long way with President Bola Tinubu whom the DSS accused him of desiring to destabilize his government.
Extract from the interview:
In Nigeria, whenever you want something done well for the good of society, aaah! Because of what he is looking for, not everybody is looking for something. Tinubu, the President of Nigeria, when he was governor of Lagos, I was leader of his cabinet retreats. I used to go and retreat with his cabinet.
And for a fact, let him tell you how much he paid me. I used to do that for companies and I would charge companies N20 million, to run a retreat, but for the Lagos State government, I charged nothing because I thought it was my citizen’s duty. As I used to call it (which is why he calls me citizen). That’s his nickname for me.
So, if I did all I did for him, when he was governor, including incurring the anger of President Olusegun Obasanjo whose policy team I was chairman of, when he was candidate, but who got very upset when he heard that I was helping out Tinubu the way that I helped, which is why I didn’t end up in the Obasanjo government. Many people called me, was it Waziri Ibrahim, Oby Ezekwesili, saying that Baba is very angry with me for joining AD. My response was: I am not AD. I am a citizen, I’m contributing my meat to Lagos State. And I am glad that Bola Tinubu cannot show one naira he ever gave me for doing that work.
