A member of the Seventh House of Representatives, Honourable Bamidele Faparusi, says the All Progressives Congress (APC) would have to embrace zoning as part of the strategies to win the 2018 governorship poll in Ekiti State.
Mr Faparusi, who is a governorship aspirant from Gbonyin Local Government Area in Ekiti South Senatorial District, said the time had come for the APC to deploy support for the ‘South Agenda’ the way it did for the North Senatorial District under the Action Congress, prior to the 2007 governorship election, leading to the election of both Mr Segun Oni and Dr Kayode Fayemi in sequential order.
The former lawmaker also described as empty boast, Governor Ayodele Fayose’s consistent outburst that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) would ‘conquer’ the APC in all the 16 local government areas of the state in a manner akin to how he trounced Fayemi in 2014.
Faparusi, who spoke in Ado Ekiti on Thursday while presenting Christmas gifts to the party members across the state’s 177 wards, said zoning had become a child of necessity and veritable weapon for his party to win the impending electoral battle.
At the event presided over by the APC Acting Chairman, Mrs Kemi Olaleye, the party restated the barring of all the members of the State Working Committee from hobnobbing from any of the governorship aspirant to prevent implosion as witnessed in Ondo State.
“I will Defeat Them Hundred Times”
The former federal legislator further scoffed at Fayose over what he branded ‘gradual injection of the almajiris culture’ to Ekiti through the Stomach Infrastructure Programme, saying “people must stop queuing on the road to get a congo of rice. This is dehumanising and could better be described as a brazen reduction of human dignity”.
On the zoning palaver, Faparusi advised his party not to toy with the agitation that was gradually gaining grounds in the state.
“Any party that jettisons zoning should forget the election. In 2007, there was what we called the North Agenda and we all embraced it.
“Both Mr Oni and Dr Fayemi were beneficiaries of that and it was made possible because we all supported the idea and time has come to reciprocate this for the south.
“Since 1999, the Central has produced Governor Fayose and Otunba Niyi Adebayo and they have ruled for 12 years. The north has spent eight years leaving the south with nothing. So, the time has come for the south to produce the governor for equity, fairplay and justice.
“These three instruments or words are very important in any political party. Any party that lacks it will be engaging in self-destruct and we won’t want our party to be destroyed over avoidable circumstance,” he said.
Faparusi insisted that with zoning, the APC would crush Governor Fayose in the election.
“What the PDP used to defeat us in 2014 was federal might . They got almost all our leaders arrested before that election and today the pendulum has changed.
“Governor Fayose can no longer manipulate the Army, Department of State Service and the police. He has no access to multi-billion Naira free money, so he should be ready for defeat under a free and fair poll not like the kangaroo that brought him into government.
Governor Fayose had in November boasted that his party, the PDP, would retain the governorship of the state.
The governor added that no matter the mercenaries put in place by the All Progressives Congress-led Federal Government in 2018, Ekiti would remain a PDP controlled state.
”Only time will judge the decision taken by electorates in Ondo State. Anybody who thinks Ekiti State is the next state to be taken by the APC, that is a big lie.
“I am very close to my people in Ekiti State and no one can take Ekiti from me Ayo Fayose.
“If election is conducted hundred times in Ekiti, I, Ayo Fayose, will defeat them hundred times,” he claimed.
