By Ayo Kehinde
Former Ekiti State governor Ayodele Fayose on Wednesday gave indication of his readiness to dump his party, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, when he twitted that he will support a southern candidate in Nigeria’s 2023 presidential election.
According to the two term governor of Ekiti State first in 2003 and then in 2014, “The current President of Nigeria is a 2-term Northern Presidency, thus implying that it MUST be a Southern Presidency in 2023 or NOTHING,” the former governor tweeted on Wednesday. “Nigerians should await details soon.”
Fayose move opens a new front to the brewing crisis in the opposition party following the emergence of the Delta State Governor Ifenayo Okowa as the party’s Vice Presidential candidate.
Alluding to the crisis, Governor Samuel Ortom told Arise TV in an interview that the selection committee of the party chose Rivers State governor, Nyesom Wike and since Atiku decided to ignore them and choose Okowa, he, Ortom, is hibernating for the time being until Atiku offers convincing reasons to taking the decision.
Fayose, Ortom alongside, Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo state and his Abia counterpart, Dr Okezie Ikpeazu are known supporters of Wike. Many stakeholders who felt the party should have zoned the presidency to the South are up in arms against Atiku’s emergence.
has been vocal against the PDP choosing former vice president Atiku Abubakar, a northerner as its presidential candidate for the 2023 election.
Though it is yet unclear how to decode what he means by ‘support for Southern president in 2023’, Fayose is highly believed to favour working with the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Bola Tinubu, to whom he had always deferred as his leader in the Southwest. In that light, the former Ekiti governor who ran for his party’s presidential election may defect the the governing APC.
