By Uche Amunike
Hours after the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) lost the 2023 presidential election to the All Progressives Congress (APC), Ex-Governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose, announced, Wednesday, during a programme on Arise TV, that he has resigned from the PDP, as well as partisan politics.
Speaking, during the Arise TV programme, where he appeared as a guest, Fayose stated that the PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar refused to accept the condition given to him by the aggrieved G-5 governors to serve only one term in office.
He also blamed the National Chairman of PDP, Iyiorcha Ayu, for the failure of the party at the February 25th polls.
His words: ‘This Ayu was the one who led Atiku to the gutters. They took him to the gutters. You see when a man cannot come out. At 80, what does he want to do after that?’
‘From today, I stay off the PDP. I say it here, from today on, I step aside because I must be talking like a leader in this country.’
‘I had issued on my Twitter handle, even in the month, whether it was January or December that I warned the PDP of this problem. If not resolved, it will consume this party. I told them there was danger ahead. Watch it.’
He advised the PDP to accept defeat as he alleged that they were sponsoring protests against the election results, heaping the blame on Ayu for misleading Atiku.
During the interview, members of a civil society organization where shown in a video, protesting the results of the election in Abuja. In reaction, Kayode Fayose revealed that they were actually members of the PDP and not Civil Society as they made people believe.
Hear him: ‘Let me first fault the people I saw here today, that are calling themselves civil society. No, they are PDP members.’
‘The person that first spoke on behalf of protesters here is Yusuf from Oyo State; he is a PDP member contesting in 2019. He is a good brother of mine. The other young lady is also from Oyo State, they are all PDP members. If you see a protest rally, you will see the trickiness of the protest rally.’
‘These are PDP agents. These are people doing this to just show Nigerians that we are not happy. PDP has been sponsoring a lot of people to protest and giving them money. They go and carry people from somewhere; give them N1,000 each, and sometimes they will beat themselves. You can count the number of protesters here at an election that attracted almost 22 million people. You count these people as protesting’, he maintained.
Kayode Fayose also spoke his mind concerning the oncoming governorship election in Lagos state and urged Nigerians to take the election seriously. He strongly advised Nigerians to return Governor Sanwo-Olu by giving their votes to him. He particularly advised they should stay off the PDP.
His words: ‘The PDP candidate in Lagos is like people doing theatre to me. Lagos business is serious business. There are lots of challenges in Lagos. So I enjoin everybody in Lagos to return this Sanwo-Olu and stay off of the PDP.’
