Chief Olusegun Osoba, former Governor of Ogun State has declared that God chose Bola Tinubu to be Nigeria’s first progressive president.

Osoba made the comment in an interview with ARISE TV on Thursday while reacting to claims that M.K.O Abiola’s portrait ought to have been unveiled during the Democracy Day event on June 12 in place of Tinubu’s.

He said: “I think you will recall that the same  Lagos State Government in which President Bola Tinubu is fully involved in, has done a giant portrait of M.K.O Abiola at Ikeja interchange and did a garden where there will be many major political rallies.

“Therefore, I should believe that M.K.O Abiola was the first to be honoured with a giant statue and if you consider the fact that President Tinubu is the first ever progressive politician to be elected as president of this country.

“I see it as a symbol that President Tinubu was virtually chosen by God to be the president because if you look at his emergence, he was not supposed to be president.

“The party was not on his side. A substantial part of the then government, of which we are the same, was not on his side.

Obstacles were placed before him. Midway through the announcement of the result, an attempt was made to abort the continuation of the result in the same way as Abiola’s results were aborted.

“You will recall that President Obasanjo issued a very powerful statement to President Buhari to stop the announcement of the collation of the results.

“It was not President Tinubu’s doing that he emerged as president; it was God’s doing and that may be the reason the decision was made to do a portrait to reflect the challenges he went through to emerge as the first progressive president of the country.”

Commending the media for their role in the country, the veteran journalist, condemned the harassment, and abduction of journalists by security agencies in recent times.

He, however, lamented the current state of journalism, criticising untrained bloggers who often publish misleading information, and urged trained journalists to adhere to professional codes of conduct.