A Nollywood actress and deputy governorship candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) in Rivers State in the 2023 general election, Tonto Dikeh, has said she will continue to contest election until she realises her ambition.
Dikeh who stated this in an interview with journalists in Abuja at the weekend said, her chances of governing the oil rich state in the future were both high and slim because “politics is dirty.”
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She said: “One of the things I learnt (contesting) is resilience. Never giving up, I know after four years they will forget about me that she is not going to come back but I am going to come back. Every four years I am going to come back. I will come back and I will be in their faces. I will be coming back to contest.
“My chances (of becoming governor) are high and slim because politics is dirty. It’s not going to be free and fair, Wike didn’t win free and fair. So, I don’t expect politics to be free and fair but I expect that as someone said, having lion’s heart requires taking the lion share.
“I won’t care what they think about my position, I will keep having the lion share, whether it is my personal life, it is politics, I am here to stay and they have no choice but to accept it.”
The celebrity said leadership is something that Nigerian youths need, especially now that they are all striving for a better Nigeria.
“…I said something, I said that the youths are restless. They are young, they are vibrant and this is the time for them to do things. They cannot achieve those things if they do not fall under the platform of leadership.
“I contested for deputy governor of Rivers State under ADC and I saw how the older politicians perceived me like ooh! this girl she came to joke but I told them I didn’t come to joke.
“I made them understand that I came to fight. I might not have won but it will go down in history that I contested against Wike or Wike’s boy or the other big shots that I contested against,” Dikeh said.
According to her, one of the reasons why the elderly looked down on the youth is because they lack leadership and the older class does not see what they should be seeing in the younger people.
“They are not totally wrong; I saw what happened in the #Endsars. There was no form of leadership. I personally did not want to indulge in that because after investing so much millions on GOTNI Leadership Centre, attending programmes almost every three months, I would not go into a fight blind without a leader or without a structure.
“It was structureless and these are the things that the elderly politicians look at us and say that these people are not ready. We need to put ourselves in the position of power and it is not just contesting, it is actually being in power yourself and I don’t think we have gotten there yet as it is,” she added.