Dele Momodu, a journalist and founder of Ovation Magazine, has claimed that he has been chosen by God to be Nigeria’s president.
Momodu mentioned this during an interview on Channels Television on Thursday.
Momodu had previously expressed interest in running for president in 2023 when he met with Ayorchia Ayu, the chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), at the party’s headquarters in Abuja.
The publisher ran for president in 2011 on the National Conscience Party’s platform (NCP).
When asked if he can survive the influence of Atiku Abubakar and other PDP candidates, Momodu claimed he is Nigeria’s largest brand and that no other candidate has as many cross-party friends as he does.
The publisher said that he had a large following among young people, whom he described as the largest political party in Nigeria, and that his party requires a youth-friendly candidate to defeat the All Progressives Congress (APC).
“I don’t like to sound immodest. There is no brand bigger than — brand Dele Momodu — in Nigeria. I’m not even talking about the party.
I’ll be one of the few candidates, like Chief Abiola, who can count on cross-party support. Nobody should be confident about winning an election if he or she is solely reliant on his or her political party. I’m one of the lucky ones.
“When I joined the PDP, my first assignment is to ask the young people to start registering online —iampdp.com — go and check how many people have registered
“If you cannot drive out the youth, the biggest political party — the youth — I called the voters’ party, if a party ignores the voters and you want to defeat an incumbent party like APC, where they have people who don’t care about anything.
“You must get, one, a candidate with a very clean record, no controversy. You must get a candidate who is youth-friendly. You must get a candidate who is cosmopolitan.
“You must get a candidate who is friends with everybody but very firm who can speak truth to power. I have been speaking truth to power despite the fact that most of these guys are my friends. You hardly find such in any political party. Dele Momodu was preserved by God for that role.”
When asked if he would leave the PDP if he did not receive the ticket, he responded that he would support any candidate who emerged as the party’s standard-bearer.