Ekiti State Governor and Presidential Aspirant of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Dr Kayode Fayemi, received a hero’s welcome on Wednesday on his return to Ado-Ekiti, the state capital, after the party’s Special Convention and presidential primary.
A large crowd of enthusiastic party supporters, artisans and commercial motorbike riders received Fayemi at Igbara-Odo, a border town between Ekiti and Ondo State with songs and drumming and followed him to the Fajuyi Pavilion, Ado-Ekiti, where another large crowd had converged to receive the Governor with “Fayemi for Nigeria” slogans.
Fayemi, one of the leading aspirants of the party, stepped down for the eventual winner, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and urged the state delegates and his supporters across the states to vote for the former Lagos State Governor during the APC primary.
Addressing party supporters at the rally, Fayemi said the unity of the country was a major consideration for him in taking the decision to step down for Tinubu, whom he described as a leader, mentor and a great fighter for democracy and Nigeria.
Fayemi disclosed that President Muhammadu Buhari, the APC Presidential flagbearer, Tinubu, the party’s National Chairman, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, APC governors and other critical stakeholders will be in Ado-Ekiti next Tuesday for the party’s mega rally in support of the Ekiti State Governorship Candidate, Mr Biodun Abayomi Oyebanji.
He said APC will win the June 18 governorship election in the state convincingly and use it as a springboard for the many electoral victories that would follow at the state and national level.
He said the electoral victory of the party’s presidential Candidate, Tinubu will start from the success of the party in the coming Ekiti gubernatorial election.
The Governor, who gave an insight into his decision to step down for Tinubu at the APC Convention, said his action at the convention was honourable and expected of a typical Ekiti man to support intentions geared towards the progress and prosperity of the region.
He said he was happy over the outcome of the convention, adding that it has further strengthened and solidified the unity and cohesion of the party against predictions from some quarters that the APC would collapse at the convention.
He thanked all Ekiti traditional rulers, Ekiti elders, party members and Ekitis home and abroad for their unalloyed support for his presidential aspiration.
He also charged party members, people of the state and lovers of Ekiti to work assiduously for the election of Oyebanji, the APC candidate in the June 18 election.
He said: “There can be victory in what appears to be a loss. There can be success in what others call failure. We had to act in unity and cohesion for the manifest destiny of Nigeria to arrive, for the unity of Nigeria to be consolidated and for the success of our party to be whole.
“Before we went into the convention, the story was that APC will collapse, that we will come out of the convention in smattering, that everything will go haywire. We have come out of our convention stronger, victorious and better consolidated. We have come out of our convention energised to ensure that the ‘poverty developers party’ do not come back either in Ekiti or in Nigeria and all other pretenders who are running helter-skelter, pretending that they have what it takes to govern, they will meet their waterloo right from June 18 right to the presidential election in March 2023, and we shall win and we shall be victorious.”
