It’s Extremely Ridiculous To Be Tipped As Tinubu’s Chief Of Staff – Fashola

The Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola has denied claims that he has been penciled down to become the Chief of Staff to the President-elect, Bola Tinubu.

In an interview on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics, Fashola described the claims on social media as extremely ridiculous and should be ignored by well-meaning Nigerians.

The minister said Nigerians should stop choosing offices for the nation on social media and wait for Tinubu to be sworn in, and respect the privilege and the prerogative he has to constitute his team.

Fashola, however, said he is unlikely to become the next Chief of Staff this time around after he played that role for four and half years when Tinubu was governor of Lagos State.

When asked directly by the interviewer if he would be playing the role this time around, Fashola replied: “Unlikely, I don’t think so. I think it is a good point you raised, I think it is extremely ridiculous and I say it without apology, we begin to choose offices for a nation that represents the largest black nation on earth on social media and we should stop it.

“I think we have elected the president, let us wait for him to be sworn in, and let us respect the privilege and the prerogative he has to constitute his team, no serious nation does what rascals are doing on social media, saying this one is this, this one is that, picking ministers and so on.

“We just saw over two years ago when Biden was elected, there was nothing like that, we should stop ridiculing this country, it is not social engagement.

 “I think it is extremely ridiculous, look we can’t begin to even contemplate what the president-elect will do and we should wait until he makes his decision.”

Speaking further, the former Lagos governor said the APC trained 2,000 agents from all the states and sent them to the states to train the agents in their respective states.

Fashola, who was the head of the Planning Directorate of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, said some of the agents came from the United States to campaign for Tinubu.

He said the ruling party also had pre-election internal polls but never released them, noting that those that predicted victory for Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP), and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) were “badly conducted”.

The minister also said that the party knew its results from the situation room before the final declaration by the INEC.