A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Chief Mike Ozekhome has called on Nigerians to always wish their leaders a successful and accident-free tenure.
The new call by the foremost constitutional and human rights lawyer was against the backdrop of minor ‘slip’ experienced by President Bola Tinubu on Democracy Day.
The President had since shrugged off the slip, saying jokingly: “I dobale for Democracy’
In a statement made available to Blueprint, the learned silk while dwelling more on the slip said: “We cannot afford for him to fall because we shall be the worse for it and bear the brunt together.
The lawyer who expressed his reservation on the spate of reactions that followed it said, “Reactions varied widely but many tended to make light of it, while others saw it as evidence of the President’s physical incapacity to cope with the tedious demands of his office.”
While dispelling Political opportunism that trailed the incident, Ozekhome reminded them that it could have been Atiku Abubakar or Peter Obi, the President’s main opponents in the last election, insisting that it has nothing to do with one’s physical fitness.
History according to him is replete with world leaders who put a physical foot or both feet wrong; some more than once and got up, dusted themselves and forged ahead, stamping their feet on the sands of time, leaving indelible footprints and track records of achievement and performance on the job and in history.
Ozekhome, who went back memory lane cited similar slip by President Joe Biden of the United States of America, former Presidents Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Robert Mugabe, British Margaret Thatcher, Boris Johnson, and Russian Vladmin Putin among others was quick to place President Tinubu among the league, adding: “ The foregoing shows that President Tinubu is in good company when it comes to presidential falls and that, as stated by a famous sage, it is not falling that matters, but rising each time you fall. However, beyond merely getting up and forging ahead, it is the kind of legacy one lives behind – what one will be remembered for-that count.”
“The circumstances of his fall are, however, reminders of the labors of our hero’s past (a verse from our now discarded national anthem!) – this time the presumed winner of the June 1993 President, Chief M.K.O. Abiola,who was martyred in redemptive messiahnism.”
