Former Ekiti State Governor Ayodele Fayose announced his resignation from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Wednesday, as well as his retirement from partisan politics.
This comes just hours after his party, the PDP, was defeated in the presidential election by the All Progressives Congress.
Fayose, who announced his resignation while appearing as a guest on ARISE TV, revealed that the PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, turned down an offer of one term in office in order to gain the support of the G5 governors.
Atiku lost the G5 governors’ states to Tinubu of the APC, who won three, and Obi of the Labour Party, who won two.
Announcing his resignation, Fayose said, “From today, I stay off PDP.”
When asked if that was a resignation, he said, “Let me put it this way, in party politics. Because there are certain facts. I am 62.
“I say it here from today, 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 of January or December, I warned the PDP about this problem. if not resolved will consume this party, I told them there is Danger ahead. Watch it.
“I was invited by His Excellency Atiku Abubakar to a hotel in Lagos. I told him four things, that there were four demands they made of you. One, you are seventy-six as of last year. The G-5 said, you are already a candidate, you can’t abort a child that has been given birth to.
“But let us go back and tell the Southerners that you will spend four years so that it would not look like it will be eight to eight years back to back for the North because Buhari is leaving and he is representing the North irrespective of the party.
“They told his excellency to make his official announcement, not that he should hand it over to any member of the G-5. That you are going to spend four years and at that time you will be 80 years, all the people surrounding him disagree, that they can’t say such, when he becomes President he will say it, who does that?
Speaking further, Fayose accused the National Chairman of the party, Iyiorcha Ayu, of the failure of the party at the poll.
He urged the party to accept defeat, alleging that they are sponsoring protests against the outcome of the election.
“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?
Reacting to a video showing members of a civil society organisation who protested against the outcome of the election in Abuja, Fayose said, “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 that contested in 2019. He is a good brother of mine. The young lady too is from Oyo State. They are all PDP members.
“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 N1000 each and sometimes they will beat themselves. You can count the number of protesters here in an election that attracted almost 22 million people. You count these people protesting,” he said.
Speaking on the governorship election in Lagos State, he said, “The PDP candidate in Lagos to me, they are people doing theatre. Lagos business is a serious business.
There are lots of challenges in Lagos. So I enjoin everybody in Lagos to return Sanwo-Olu.”
