‎I can’t be your role model - Tinubu blasts Kashamu

The National Leader of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu, has lashed out at Buruji Kashamu, the Senator-elect of Ogun East Senatorial District for describing him as his role model.

In a statement Tuesday, Mr. Tinubu called on the senator-elect to liken himself to Bode George and President Goodluck Jonathan, both members of his party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party.

“Kashamu may be prodigal but he is no political son of Tinubu,” Mr. Tinubu said in a statement signed by Sunday Dare, his media adviser.
“Kashamu’s political lineage tracks to people like Bode George and President Jonathan. He should direct his encomiums to these men who are his true role models. They need his contrived affections more than Tinubu does.”

But in his response on Tuesday, Mr. Tinubu told the Senator-elect, who served as the Chairman of the South-West PDP Organization and Mobilisation Committee to “stop this cynical fawning,” noting that “it will not work.”

“The days of false adulation are gone in Nigerian politics. Fake praise singers like Kashamu will find that their particular craft is no longer in vogue. During this election cycle, their practice has dramatically turned from the way things are to how things used to be,” said Mr. Tinubu.
“Henceforth, there will be consequences for the positions a politician takes and the words they utter.
“Politicians will no longer be able to change direction and loyalties as if they were changing clothes. Those in politics must know that responsibility and accountability shall now follow them. One can no longer walk both sides of the street at the same time. In case Kashamu has not noticed, the politics of principle defeated the politics of posturing.”

Despite his victory at the March 28 election, over the past few days, Mr. Kashamu has cut the figure of a desperate man frantically waving an olive branch at his opponents.

Mr. Tinubu accused Mr. Kashamu of undermining the democratic process by “buying his victory,” adding that he is merely an isolated vestige of a dying past.

“For him to liken himself to Bola Tinubu is for a small rut to call itself a mountain. For Kashamu to call Tinubu a role model is Kashamu‘s admission that he does not know the meaning of the term. There are no grounds for comparison. There is only contrast. Tinubu has sacrificed years trying to bring democracy to Nigeria. He struggled in opposition to the powers that be.
“Without this, at times, lonesome fight and singular determination, the great change in Nigerian politics would not have happened as it did. Tinubu is an architect of democracy. Kashamu is a failed demolisher of that which Tinubu has strived to build. Under Kashamu’s designs, our elections would be a wholly mercantile undertaking.
“Meanwhile, Kashamu has blown wherever the prevailing winds took him. He stood for nothing and sacrificed nothing except the people’s welfare.”

Mr. Tinubu further described Mr. Kashamu as a man “knocking on the wrong door at the wrong house at the wrong time.”

“This same Kashamu rained insults on former President Obasanjo in a vicious campaign of calumny. Kashamu’s party, PDP sponsored defamatory documentaries full of lies and innuendos against me, General Muhammadu Buhari and other leaders of APC,” he said.
“Please keep your peace until you make your trip to the USA as a Senator elect. Upon your return we can then have a conversation. We can then proceed with your repudiation of the PDP with a promise that you will stop corrupting and fouling the political system.
“That Kashamu would deign to compare himself with Tinubu is a distasteful insult to Tinubu and to anyone who knows Nigerian politics. If he has any sense of propriety, Kashamu should retract the corrupt missive and apologize for this latest lie to the public.”