A group under the auspices of Ekiti South Agenda Youth Movement (EKSAYM) has warned the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) against treating the people of Ekiti South Senatorial District as second class citizens in the 2022 governorship poll.
The group insisted that the citizens of the area are not inferior to their Central and Northern counterparts, saying time is ripe for the district to produce the next governor.
This was contained in a statement issued by the group’s State Co-ordinator, Ayodele Joel Oguntuase Esq., and co-signed by the Publicity Secretary, Mr Augustine Tamale on Monday at her State Secretariat.
Tracing the trajectory of democratic development in Ekiti State, the legal luminary, Oguntuase, clarified that the North and the Central Senatorial Districts have consistently dominated the political hemisphere of Ekiti since the advent of democracy in 1999.
The group insisted that the two major political parties in Ekiti must cede their tickets to the South in 2022 in the spirit of homogeneity among Ekiti people and sustenance of brotherhood in the state.
The statement read in parts, “In 1999, at inception of democratic government in Ekiti, Otunba Niyi Adebayo was elected from the Central. His successor, Mr Ayodele’s Fayose, who ruled Ekiti twice is also from the Central, making a cummulative of 12 years.
“Engr Segun Oni, who succeeded Mr. Fayose as a democratically elected governor is from the North. He ruled the State for three and a half years while the incumbent, Dr Kayode Fayemi, who hails from the same region took over from him through judicial pronouncement and he is spending his second term.
“By 2022, North would have ruled the state for eleven and half years, while the South was kept at bay. This is not the best way to build an egalitarian society even as currently evidence in the composition of the present Ekiti State Working Committee wherein the Central Senatorial District occupies the position of the State Chairman, Youth Leader and Woman Leader, the North Senatorial District occupies the position of the State Secretary and Treasurer whereas the South Senatorial District are left with shackles of Ex-officio.
“It is our unwavering belief that what is politically good for Ekiti North and Central Senatorial Districts is also good and befitting to Ekiti South Senatorial District.
“Ekiti South Senatorial District is overripe, overdue to produce the governor and the most auspicious time is 2022.”
The group’s publicist, Augustine Tamale, also maintained that the zone has eminently qualified and highly exposed scholars with global respect and reckoning that can be elected as Governor and do Ekiti proud with good governance.
Tamale said the zone won’t take flimsy excuses from any party, groups or individuals with penchant for playing on people’s intelligence and emotion with a pretentious claim that Ekiti is one and should not be allowed to be ripped off by ambition.
“In 2007, all our elders across parties supported zoning of the governorship ticket to the North. This was the statistics that favoured Fayemi and Oni in the defunct Action Congress and the PDP respectively .
“We are not cowards and time to fight for our rights is now. We are more than capable and worthy to produce the next sitting governor and this agitation (Ekiti South Agenda) is not negotiable,” he said.