2023: Group Seeks Consensus Candidate For South-West; Says North Plans Waterloo For Zone

By Akinwale Kasali

“The South-west will move to another Political Party if the APC denies the Zone the Presidential ticket”

The embarrassing number of aspirants from the South West region jostling to take over the Presidential Seat from President Muhammadu Buhari in 2023 has prompted  the Pan Yoruba Group, Alliance of Yoruba Democratic Movements, AYDM, to urge a prune down of  the number of aspirants to two.

In a statement on Friday, May 13th, 2022, the Group said the multiplicity of candidates may rob the region the slot of the Presidency in 2023.

The group said the Northern leaders in the APC appear to  have designed the architecture that will lead to the South West political waterloo in the coming primary slated for the end of May.

“There is a conscious attempt to set the South West against itself. With some six aspirants contesting on the All Progressives Congress, (APC) alone, the prospect of the next President emerging from the South West is dim” AYDM, an alliance of some 121 different Pan Yoruba groups said in the statement signed by its General Secretary, Popoola Ajayi.

AYDM called on the South West leadership to  employ credibility and public acceptability as the yardstick to arrive at a consensus candidate.

The coalition asked the people of the South West to prepare to move to another political party if the APC fails to produce a Presidential candidate from the region.

“The people of the South West have no other option than to leave the APC if the party fails to pick its Presidential candidate from the region. It will be another sign of treachery and a confirmation that the alliance of the South West and the North in 2015 was in bad faith. It will show clearly that the core North can never be trusted now or in the future” Ajayi said

The group said some of the aspirants have no basis to even collect the forms except for the purpose of deepening the crisis of selection in the APC South West.