How Tony Elumelu Became “Poster Boy” Of Presidential Campaigns

Anthony Onyemaechi Elumelu the holder of the national honours of Member of the Order of the Federal Republic (MFR) and Commander of the Order of Niger (CON) has become the poster boy of different presidential campaigns for the 2023 election in Nigeria.

SocietyNow.Ng’s checks revealed that the handlers of front-runner candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) have adopted the face of the economic barrier breaker who transformed the United Bank for Africa (UBA) from a single-country banking group to a pan-African bank with subsidiaries in 20 African countries and outside the continent (France, USA, UK, and, most recently, the UAE, in Dubai) to make better sense of the popular “Agbado (Corn) and Cassava” advocacy.

In one of his interventions to help turn the fortune of the country around, Tinubu advocated putting “idle labor” to use in the agricultural sector with Agbado and Cassava as major staples.

The opposition turned Tinubu’s move on its head with taunts of a plan to turn Nigeria into a pedestrian economy of “Agbado and Cassava” if he becomes President of Nigeria.

Among other counter-narratives, Tinubu handlers leveraged Elumelu’s confessed love for “roasted corn” including making popular pictures of the founder of the Tony Elumelu Foundation – an initiative that has filled the gap of capital and support networks for over 15,000 young African entrepreneurs – buying roasted corn by the roadside and eating it in a private jet to make nonsense of taunts of “pedestrian advocacy” of the opposition.

Further checks by SocietyNow.Ng revealed that the extraordinary businessman behind the nation’s largest publicly listed conglomerate, Transnational Corporation of Nigeria Plc (Transcorp) is also being claimed as a “campaign material” by campaigners for Peter Obi, the Labour Party Presidential candidate.

SocietyNow.Ng gathered that the son of Suzanne and Dominic Elumelu from Onicha-Ukwu in Aniocha North Local Government Area of Delta State is being claimed as one of their own by the group known as the “Obidients” and his towering achievements reference points of great possibilities inherent in his clans urge for business.

The Obidients is a play on Obi, the name of the Labour Party Presidential candidate whose ambition is galvanized by the agitation that it is the turn of South-East Nigeria to produce the next President.

“Elumelu is a son of the soil and what he is doing is a testament to what we can do” the Obidients insist.

Interestingly also claiming the proponent of Africapitalism ( call-to-action for businesses to make decisions that will increase the economic and social wealth of Africa coined by Elumelu ) as a campaign point are those pushing Atiku Abubakar, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Presidential candidate to be the next President.

SocietyNow.Ng gathered that the Chairman of the group that recently announced significant growth across all metrics with gross earnings pegged at N111.2Billion – Transcorp – is bandied about as one of the friends of the house that will make things happen if Atiku becomes president.

“What is playing out is the saying that success attracts friends and family from far and near and is a friend to all, Elumelu is a success story and all the parties are leveraging his status” SocietyNow.Ng gathered.

In the face of all these claims, SocietyNow.Ng’s checks revealed that the extraordinary businessman who was honored with the National Productivity Order of Merit Award in 2019 and listed in TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in 2020 has simply focused on his “businesses.”