Senator Buruji Kashamu (PDP-Ogun East) has faulted the choice of Ekiti State Governor Ayo Fayose, as the Chairman of Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) Governors’ Forum.
According to the Nation, Kashamu castigated his party governor Fayose in a statement released in Ijebu-Igbo on Sunday.
He said: “It was a misnormer that the governors of an opposition party that is in need of rebranding and repositioning could choose a liability, a loud mouth and an immature politician like Fayose as the Chairman of the PDP Governors’ Forum.
“It is not that his emergence as the Chairman of the Forum means anything to me.
Fayose is new chairman of PDP Governors’ Forum
`But as a committed and loyal party man, it gives me great concern that instead of taking steps that will foster peace and unity, we are doing things that will widen the gap and cause more unity.’’
Those who chose him, he said, should have a rethink in the interest of the party that is striving hard to return to power.
“His brother-governor, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, whose tenure he purportedly continued as Chairman of the PDP Governors’ Forum, is a cool-headed and balanced character.
“Even then, some of us pointed out that Governor Mimiko was slippery and sly, and a traitor who could not be relied upon.
“What happened at the end of the day? The party broke on his head when he overreached himself in the South West as the Chairman of the PDP Governors’ Forum at the behest of Governor Fayose.’’
Instead of being a strong leader who would be fair to all, and do good to all manner of people, without fear or favour, Fayose, he said, had became more of a “weather-beaten fowl, sullen and uninspiring”.
“Fayose had always wanted to be the Chairman of the PDP Governors Forum.
That was why he had some resentment towards Mimiko upon his emergence as the Chairman of the Forum in 2015.
“While I concede to our governors the right to choose whoever they want to lead them, my point is that they should have settled for a balanced, more experienced and mature person to lead the Forum, not a cantankerous, divisive and unstable character like Governor Fayose who snaps at the slightest provocation.
He said that the Forum could boasts of governors who were true leaders, not pretenders.
There were those who were better educated, well-cultured and better exposed and who were not working against the interest of their people and country.
“We have governors who have held public offices since the return to democracy in 1999 but who are untainted. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) does not have any case against them.
“Those are the kind of people that could have been chosen to lead the Forum, not one with a goodwill deficit whose hands have been found in the public till.”
He said that the choice of Fayose as chairman of PDP Governors’ Forum would further polarise the party and destroy it.
He recalled that Governor Fayose brought Senator Ali Modu Sheriff and sold him to other stakeholders.
“But when he saw that Senator Sheriff would not be pliable in his inordinate ambition to arbitrarily hand him the critical structures of the party from the South West zone to the national level, he cooked up a lot of lies and sold them to Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State and others in order to discredit Sheriff.
