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Power Rotation: Fayose Reading PDP’s Constitution Upside Down – Atiku

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2 years ago

July 23, 2022

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Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar has accused Ayo Fayose, former governor of Ekiti state of reading the constitution of the party upside down over the issue of power rotation between the North and South.

It will be recalled that Fayose in a tweet had faulted the emergence of the former vice-president as the PDP standard-bearer in the 2023 presidential election.

Fayose, an ally of Rivers state governor, Nyesom Wike had tweeted “The PDP constitution provides for a rotational Presidency. Section 3(c) provides that the party shall pursue its aims and objectives by “adhering to the policy of the rotation & zoning of party & public elective offices in pursuance of the principle of equity, justice and fairness.

“The current President of Nigeria is a two-term Northern Presidency, thus implying that it must be a Southern Presidency in 2023 or nothing. Awa ‘South’ lo kan’ (It is the turn of the South). Nigerians should await details soon,” Fayose had tweeted.

However, in an interview on Arise Television monitored by DAILY INDEPENDENT, Atiku said Fayose is giving a wrong interpretation to the PDP constitution.

“The position we have found ourselves is not the first time PDP has found itself but there is a difference. If the elected president is from the North and the party chairman also happens to be from the North, automatically the party chairmanship reverts to the South”.

“So, Ayo Fayose is reading the provision of Section 3 of our constitution upside down. We have had it before; we have gone through this before. This is not the only time or first time. If today I am elected the president, automatically, Senator Ayu steps down.

“In fact, we had a meeting of the Northern zone, all the stakeholders on the issue of Senator Ayu and also the chairman of the Board of Trustees and we all agreed that if the president is elected from the North, both positions will also revert.

I think there is also a general misunderstanding. PDP is different from APC. Of course, APC copied some of the things we are doing because we are an older party but they now lump us together. They now said since Buhari is from the North, so even PDP itself must pick a candidate from the South. They have forgotten that in all the PDP administrations, the South has the highest number of years when the PDP was in office.

“So, I think we need to separate these two so that we can be very rational in our argument. But I think I will also like to blame the media for not trying to differentiate between these two issues.”