From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
Ahead of the crucial presidential and National Assembly election this weekend, card-carrying Nigerians have promised to deliver over 1.6 million votes to the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Director, Directorate of Diaspora, APC Presidential Campaign Council (PCC), Ade Omole, who made the promise, explained that more than 1.6 million diaspora Nigerians with Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) will be voting during the polls.
He made the promise on Monday in Abuja while speaking with newsmen at the party’s national secretariat.
Omole, the leader of APC United Kingdom, announced that registered Nigerian voters in the diaspora are willing to return to the country to cast their votes during the forthcoming general elections.
“We are all Nigerians, though we leave outside the country, we have families in the country, we have sisters, brothers, fathers, mothers and our employees,” he said.
“Nigerians in the diaspora matter a great deal, not just because of the amount of money we remit to the country annually which equals the amount from the sales of crude oil. But because we are all stakeholders in the country and the electoral process, most Nigerians in the diaspora are registered voters,’’ Omole noted.
He also added that the directorate had entered into an agreement with two foreign airlines to offer rebate tickets to such Nigerians irrespective of their party affiliation to make travelling easy for them.
“From our last research, more than 1.6 million Nigerians with PVCs leave outside Nigeria and would surely come back to the country to vote during the coming elections. This is probably more than the number of people in some states within the country, so Nigerians in the diaspora do matter.
“There are progressive Nigerians and supporters of Bola Tinubu with PVCs who will come back to the county to vote for him,” Omole assured.
He argued that even if the entire 1.6 million registered Nigerian voters in the diaspora did not return to the country to vote during the election, over one million of them will return.
He further explained that the essence was to correct the erroneous narratives about Tinubu and Shettima that had been circulated on social media and provide answers to them.
“Because we know how very important it is to have very positive feedback from international communities, partners, associations and foreign governments. Especially the United State and the United Kingdom among other countries because they do support us in several ways, security being one of them.
“The diaspora directorate had been meeting with officials of these countries to assure them that Tinubu, our principal, believes in democracy and his ethic,” Omole said.