Chief Ladi Williams (SAN) has described former Lagos State governor, Bola Tinubu, as a leader the Yorubas of the South West trust and would continue to follow in politics.
The scion of the late Chief Rotimi William, who also singled out former President Olusegun Obasanjo as one Nigerian leader that one can readily point at as being detribalised, made the assertion in an interview with Sunday Independent at the weekend.
Though countering widely held notion of Tinubu being a godfather, he likened the former Lagos State governor to Nigeria’s foremost nationalists, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Ahmadu Bello and Obafemi Awolowo, who, he stressed, directing politics of their respective regions in the First Republic.
His words: “It was wherever Zik (Azikiwe) wanted his people to go that they would go, same thing with Awolowo for the West and Sardauna (Bello) for the North. They did not lose election in their regions.
Williams recalled that Joseph Tarka held forth in the Middle Belt, the present day North Central, while Eyo Eyo held sway for Ibibios, currently in the South-South geo-political zone.
Describing Nigeria as a developing country and that some certain persons in the country have their own time in giving political leadership to the people, he said that Tinubu’s political leadership would still have sustainable relevance in the future.
He said: “Tinubu was governor for eight years in Lagos State and we saw what he did. He laid the foundation for subsequent governance, so people trust him and I think they still trust him because up till tomorrow any party that he moves forward and tells the people of Lagos to support they would do so and they have been doing so.”
On who is an exceptional in terms of not being swayed by forces of tribalism and sectionalism, the frontline lawyer singled out Obasanjo, saying, “Obasanjo is the only one I would say, without prejudice to anything, that has been reasonable.”
