Ayo Adebanjo, a chieftain of Afenifere, the Yoruba socio-cultural association, said the national leader of the All Progressives Congress, APC, must be naive to think that the North will allow him to succeed Buhari in 2023.
Adebanjo stated this in reaction to Senate president Bukola Saraki’s allegation that Tinubu is supporting President Buhari’s 2019 re-election bid because of his 2023 presidential ambition.
The 90-year-old statesman also urged the people of the southwest not to allow themselves to be fooled by Tinubu a second time.
Speaking with one of The Punch on Tuesday, August 21, 2018, Adebanjo said: “Tinubu is daydreaming if he thinks the North will ever support his presidential ambition. We have our principles.
“We are not supporting Buhari under any circumstance and Tinubu cannot lead Yoruba land because all he has done is to lead us astray. All he has done for us is to give some of our people who are close to him appointments.
“Nothing tangible has been done for Yoruba land. He gave his stooges appointments, nothing more, nothing less. If he has done more than that, let him say it.”
Adebanjo said the only demand the Yoruba had made was restructuring which the APC had been dishonest about.
The Afenifere chieftain said one of the reasons Afenifere supported Buhari in 2007 was because of his promise to restructure the country to allow for true federalism.
He said instead of keeping its promise, the APC resorted to setting up a committee on restructuring to deceive gullible Nigerians and the likes of Tinubu participated in the grand scheme of deception.
Adebanjo added: “How can they be telling us about the restructuring committee when from the outset, they were supposed to have started restructuring. Who do they think they are fooling? If Tinubu is daydreaming, he shouldn’t think others are daydreaming like him.”
“Buhari is a stranger to us in Yoruba land. The only Yoruba supporting him are those benefitting from this corrupt regime.”
Also, a spokesman of the socio-cultural group, Yinka Odumakin said that the exchange of words between Senate president Bukola Saraki and Chief Bola Tinubu exemplifies the elevation of personal interests and ambitions over national good and development by politicians in the country.
Odumakin noted that the verbal exchanges between Tinubu and Saraki were all about their personal interests.
He expressed disappointment that the two men were more interested in personal ambitions than in national good and progress.
“You cannot see anything in these exchanges that talk about national good or higher values. The only thing that was substantial was when Saraki said he was against Muslim-Muslim ticket in 2014. If that was true, it would have been unthinkable in a Nigeria so badly divided as it is today. Clearly, the arguments were about personal interests and ambitions,” he noted.
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