Yoruba elders restate support for Tinubu’s presidential bid

• SWAGA insists it is South-West’s turn to produce next president
• Says only traitors will compete with ex-governor

The Yoruba Council of Elders (YCE), yesterday, said it was in support of power shift to the South-West in the 2023 presidential election, adding that if Tinubu gets the ticket of his party, it will support him.

Secretary-General of YCE, Dr. Kunle Olajide, stated this in an interview with The Guardian in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital.

He said: “We are in support of South-West producing the President in 2023. We have very many materials in the region. The Yoruba have been the most consistent patriotic section of Nigeria. If it is a consensus that the South-West should produce the next president, it is a welcome development.

‘’But nobody can say Mr. X or Y is the most qualified. We need the person that has the experience, wider reach and exposure. The door is open to all Yoruba sons and daughters.”

MEANWHILE, a group, the South-West Agenda for Asiwaju (SWAGA 23), has restated that, the fact that the zone had produced the President in the past, won’t stop it from clinching the presidential ticket if the All Progressives Congress (APC) zones the ticket to the South.

The group insisted that former Lagos State Governor, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, remained the best and right man to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari in 2023 based on experience and political networks.

The former Minister of State for Works and National Chairman of SWAGA, Dayo Adeyeye, stated this in Ado-Ekiti, yesterday, during the official launching of the forum, a political platform rooting for the presidential aspiration of Tinubu.

Adeyeye added that the APC leaders must respect the zoning of Presidency to the South in 2023 as a mark of respect for the silent agreement within the party at inception in 2013.

He said that Tinubu had helped a lot of people in the country, including Ekiti State, and “if the present government of Dr. Kayode Fayemi is sincere and grateful, they know Tinubu contributed to how they got to the office.”

Also speaking at the event, a professor of Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Lagos (UNILAG), Yemi Oke, said he came to fraternise with the group as a Yoruba man, who believes in the South-West agenda for the 2023.

In his short lecture at the event, a professor of Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Lagos (UNILAG), Yemi Oke, said he came to fraternise with the group as a Yoruba man, who believes in the South-West agenda for the 2023.

Oke described Tinubu as the most qualified person to lead Nigeria after Buhari for national unity.

Meanwhile, a former senator, representing Ekiti South Senatorial District, Tony Adeniyi, in his reaction, claimed that members of SWAGA in Ekiti State were being harassed and intimidated by APC members loyal to Fayemi. He urged the people to stop the harassment in the interest of the party.

During a visit to the Ewi of Ado-Ekiti, the monarch, Oba Rufus Adeyemo Adejugbe, tasked the APC to organise the South-West and prevent crisis ahead of the 2023 presidential race.

He advised Tinubu and other politicians scrambling for the APC presidential ticket to maintain a united front so that the zone won’t lose the ticket in 2023.