Former Foreign Affairs Minister Professor Bolaji Akinyemi has said Kamala Harris will be a formidable opponent for Donald Trump in the next election, emphasising that she will be a challenging candidate for Trump to overcome.
On Sunday, Joe Biden withdrew from the US presidential race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party’s new nominee, reshaping an already remarkable race for the White House.
In the letter announcing his withdrawal, Biden stated that it was in the best interest of his party and the country to exit the race.
“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your president. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term,” Biden said.
During an interview on Arise News on Monday, Akinyemi commended Biden’s selection of Kamala Harris as his successor.
He said, “President Biden’s choice of Kamala Harris as the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party is a good choice, not necessarily because of her own character but because she is the Vice President.”
“I hope nobody is going to underestimate Kamala Harris. She had to take a low profile, and I said it three weeks ago that when you are the Vice President, you cannot be seen outshining the President. You do what the President tells you to do.”
“Kamala Harris is going to be a hard nut for Trump to crack. Be careful of lawyers, especially someone who has been an attorney general and prosecutor. She will take you to pieces with the way she will put her own questions and the way she will use you to wipe the floor. She won the Senate seat by 60% from California when she ran, so you see that she is not an easy nut to crack.”
In addressing the election’s unpredictability, Akinyemi pointed out that, “we have a very unusual situation in our hands, and it’s no use making a prediction. All predictions will just be thinking out of the box. We don’t know what will happen at the convention, and we don’t know what will happen in the confrontation between Trump and Harris.”
“We don’t know how the Americans are going to react to the possibility of the first black lady occupying the office.”
He also praised Harris’s approach following her nomination, saying:
“Harris has not put on any sense of triumphalism after Biden anointed her. She said in that acceptance speech that she is not going to take the convention for granted and will work hard to get the support of the delegates. She has a good opportunity because, in a way, it is a joint ticket. Both she and Biden ran for each one of the primaries.”
Akinyemi was confident in Kamala Harris’s prospects in the presidential election, even though she joined the ticket late.
“If I’m to put my money on it, I will put my money on Harris to win the presidential election, despite the fact that she has been brought in as the head of the ticket on short notice, he said.
“The fact that 30 million and above has poured in since the anointing of Harris shows that at least the donors are not hostile towards her. She herself has indicated that the water is warm, and anyone else who wants to jump in can do so, but she will have her head start. I don’t think there’s any governor who would want to go into that race with that kind of negativity hanging around their heads.”
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