Indications emerged at the weekend that the Ekiti State governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, has resolved to throw his hat into the ring, and is ready to compete for the presidential ticket of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), with the national leader of the party, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.
Informed sources within the APC revealed to New National Star that a combination of forces looms in the Nigerian Governors’ Forum, of which Fayemi is chairman, and that he may have got the nod of no fewer than 10 governors. Specifically, one of the sources, which asked not to be quoted owing to the sensitivity of the issue, said a recent visit of the governor to Kaduna State, to attend the graduation ceremony of Good Shepherd Major Catholic Seminary, Kafanchan, was only a decoy. “In actual fact, he was there at the behest of Governor Nasir el-Rufai who convened a meeting between him and some northern stakeholders on the need for him to secure the APC presidential ticket.
“They do not actually trust Tinubu whom they see as too radical and uncontrollable, and that his current gentle mien is only a pretension. “The caucus has also long concluded that el-Rufai should be Fayemi’s running mate and has succeeded in getting the support of 10 governors so far,” the source informed.
The source cited some of the state governors as Yahaya Bello of Kogi, Aminu Masari of Katsina, Dave Umahi of Ebonyi, Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo, Inuwa Yahaya of Gombe, Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa, Badaru Abubakar of Jigawa, and Hope Uzodinma of Imo. Tinubu, on the other hand, also last month visited Kano to mark his 69th birthday and it was touted that the state’s governor, Dr. Abdullahi Ganduje, is being primed to become his running mate. Only last week, Fayemi in Lagos, at the 2021 edition of The Platform, an annual event hosted by Pastor Poju Oyemade of the Covenant Christian Centre, threw a challenge to the youths on the need to aspire for political offices, in what observers within the party described as “weighty”.
Fayemi said, “What I am saying, in essence, is that we have a duty of mentorship to younger people to say to them that sometimes, you don’t always get what you push for, but that does not necessarily mean that is the end of the road; you keep knocking on the door, banging it and inevitably, it will open. “How long it will open will depend on your capacity to organise. “At the risk of sounding immodest, that’s what got some of us into politics. We believe that another Nigeria is possible, a better Nigeria is possible and we should not stand by the sidelines in pushing for that Nigeria of our dreams.
“We are not there yet but that does not mean we will give up.” Party pundits have since interpreted the statements to mean that the younger generation of which Fayemi is classified, should push for top political offices and ‘retire’ the older ones, which Tinubu is deemed to belong. Already, however, the Tinubu/ Fayemi’s silent contest has been made loud through a fierce contest between the camps of both politicians.