TheCable

Ayo Fayose, former governor of Ekiti state, says he is stepping aside from party politics and “staying off” the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). 

The former governor spoke in an interview with Arise TV on Wednesday.

The announcement comes a day after Atiku Abubakar, the candidate of PDP, lost the presidential election to Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Fayose, a two-term governor, said he would be staying off partisan politics “because I must be talking like a leader in this country”.

“From today, I stay off PDP,” he said. “Let me put it this way, in party politics.

“I say it here from today, I step aside because I must be talking like a leader in this country.”

Fayose also said Atiku rejected a proposal of one term in office which was meant to appease the aggrieved G5 governors in the PDP.

He added that Atiku’s acceptance would have appealed to the southern part of the country and had an effect on the election.

“I had issued on my Twitter handle even in the month of January or December, I warned the PDP about this problem, [that] if not resolved will consume this party, I told them there is danger ahead,” the former Ekiti governor said.

“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 76 as of last year. The G5 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.

“They told his excellency to make his official announcement, not that he should hand it over to any member of the G5. That you are going to spend four years and at that time you will be 80 years. All the people surrounding him disagreed, that they can’t say such, when he becomes president he will say it.

“Who does that?”