…says ‘someone recommended me as running mate’
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has said that someone recommended him for his present position in the country.
Osinbajo spoke at a dinner in honour of over 200 graduates and beneficiaries of the Presidential Amnesty Programme heldon Wednesday night at the old Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa.
He was however silent on the person that recommended him for the position of Vice President.
It would be recalled that President Muhammadu Buhari’s biographer, Professor John Paden, in his book, “Muhammadu Buhari: The Challenges of Leadership in Nigeria” said that Buhari selected Osinbajo for the position of Vice President.
But speaking at the dinner, Osinbajo said, “I was in a group of young men and women and one of them asked the question how did I become Vice President, I was never a politician or anything like that.
“So, I tried to explain it is quite simple that someone somewhere has to recommend you. Somebody somewhere has to give you a helping hand, whether to be a Vice President or to be an aircraft pilot or to be an engineer, somebody somewhere has to give you an opportunity.
” I think that all of you that are here today are the beneficiaries of the opportunities that you have somehow received. And this is why this event is so important.
“I think that it is one way we have to remind ourselves that we are bound as individuals to give opportunities to everyone”, he added.
Osinbajo explained that the essence of the amnesty programme was to give the youths better future.
He urged ex-agitators from the Niger-Delta area to stop breaking oil and gas pipelines because of the negative effect on them, their region, the country and generations yet unborn.
Beneficiaries of the presidential amnesty programme were trained as pilots, automobile and electric transformer technicians and other skills in the country and foreign universities.