I will love to be President – Fayose

Former Ekiti State Governor Ayodele Fayose has insisted that, if opportunity permits, he has an interest in becoming the President of Nigeria.

Fayose also said he was not interested in the rumored presidential ambition of the national leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, in 2023.

Asked regarding his 2023 perception, he said the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is capable of producing a president after the expiry of the term of President Muhammadu Buhari.

“Bola Tinubu is a leader in the West. It is a statement of fact. I have never met former governor Ahmed Bola Tinubu in the last three years and I have never spoken with him on the phone once. So, I don’t know how they are tying the relationship politically.

“To the best of my knowledge, I am not a member of APC. I have no influence on how he will become if he wants to become. I have no interest; the only interest I have is that a PDP president must be put in place”, Mr. Fayose said in an interview on Wednesday.

He also reiterated his earlier position on his desire to be the country’s president.

“The office of the president is a noble one and I will love to be the president of Nigeria if the opportunity permits”, he noted.

This is not the first time Mr. Fayose has talked of his desire to be president of Nigeria. He made a similar remark at Ado Ekiti in 2017 when hosting a dinner for journalists.

“It was the same prophesy that said I would return as governor of Ekiti when I was in the trenches that predicted that I will govern the whole country. Many did not believe the first one but it happened just as we are waiting for the manifestation of the second one.

“Do not bother to ask me questions as to how this will materialize, I also do not know how it will happen but all I know is that I shall one day occupy the presidential villa, not as a visitor but as president,” Mr. Fayose said then.

In 2020, Mr. Fayose spoke on a radio program he held to celebrate his 60th birthday that his next goal in life “is to become the President or a cleric of Nigeria.”