Two hundred support groups have promised to rake in 10 million votes for the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Ahmed Tinubu, in the 2023 poll.
Working under the aegis of Coalition of Support Groups for Asiwaju Shettima (COSGAS), the group claimed that already 13.5 million people had been captured in their database.
The National President and Convener of COSGAS, Chief Johnbosco Onunkwo, who spoke at the inauguration of the support groups, yesterday in Abuja, said a verification exercise would be carried out for all registered members with Permanent Voter’s Cards (PVCs), before submitting it to presidential campaign council.
“The Coalition will amount to outright victory. This is a coalition that is real. This is a coalition that is extracted from all the 36 states of the federation. The good thing is that this coalition are not people that not people that we marketed for.
“They willingly came and ready for the emergence and winning of Tinubu. And we have had this structure since 2018. We initiated this movement with a name called Estate Nigeria. And we used culture to unite Nigeria.
“Altogether we have 200 support groups. And I can tell you that the voting strength with our PVCs is over 10 million. As at today, we are getting 13.5 million members with PVCs and we will continue.
“What we just did here as representatives, we will be going back to mobilise more. But we are using only 10 million so that we can create room for uncertainties.
“So, we are sure of 10 million votes for Asiwaju Tinubu. The essence of our database that we have collected is to be handed over to the management of the campaign council for them to use their hands and do the verification. Because a lot of people are coming out to say support groups are mere support groups,” he said.
The former governorship aspirant of APC and House of Representatives candidate in Anambra State, also expressed displeasure over the sidelining of some stalwarts of APC who had contributed immensely to the growth of the Presidential Campaign Council ahead of the poll.
He said: “We were surprised. At some point, we were thinking that some names didn’t come out because those people were candidates. But we later saw the names of some people who were candidates.
“Having consulted with the campaign council to see that our names are involved, because we believe in Tinubu and Shettima, we were surprised our names didn’t even come out as cleaners.
“However, this does not stop us from what we are doing, and we are watching that the end will justify the means. This is not a threat, it’s just to streamline and make sure that whoever calls himself a support group should be verified. All we are doing is to make sure we win frictionlessly.”
