The Presidency has described the governor of Ekiti state, Ayodele Fayose, as a ”high-powered nothing” following the defeat of his party in Saturday’s governorship election in the state.
Kayode Fayemi, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), defeated the deputy governor of the state and candidate of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Professor Kolapo Olusola, and 33 others to emerge winner of the poll.
The APC candidate polled 197,459 votes to beat PDP’s Olusola, who got 178,121 votes.
Fayemi, who is returning to the Ekiti Government House for a second term after losing to Fayose in 2014, won in 12 of the 16 local government areas that make up the Fountain of Knowledge.
He also defeated the incumbent governor, who had boasted that his party would win the election, in his local government.
Fayose, a bigwig of the main opposition PDP, has never hesitated to criticise and condemn the President Muhammadu Buhari administration since Buhari took charge of the federal government in May 2015.
And the President’s media team could not have had a better time to strike back after Fayose’s anointed candidate, Olusola, lost to Fayemi.
Buhari’s top media aide Garba Shehu said in a statement titled “Fayose: In The End, A High-Powered Nothing,” that the people of Ekiti, with the result, had spoken against Fayose.
He said, “In what observers said was the most intense, and a most angry campaign, the people gave their verdict: Dr. Kayode Fayemi, the one-time governor, declared persona-non-grata is now persona-grata again.
“President Buhari has won this referendum. The people of the state have sent a clear message. The politics of brinksmanship, assaults, insults, abuses and Robin Hoodism disguised as stomach infrastructure has been rejected in favour of politics of inclusion, development, responsibility and good governance.
“President Buhari’s war against corruption and insecurity; the message of Agric revolution and infrastructure development and fidelity in resource allocation and management have struck a chord with Ekiti voters, who had been lied to and deceived by Governor Fayose.
“While the opposition continued to rant at him, President Buhari’s uprightness, coupled with incorruptibility and personal integrity, unmatched by any politician in the country have again stood the test of time.
“The All Progressives Congress win in Ekiti means that the party has control over 25 out of the 36 states of the federation. The party thus becomes the only one in power in the six states of the South-West geopolitical zone.
“Besides reinforcing the APC’s position as the only standing pole in the political landscape, it is a credit to the national leader of the party, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, against whom all manner of ethnic and religious opposition is being mounted by former President Obasanjo and some of the Asiwaju’s sworn enemies in the sub-region.”
