By our reporter| Cross River state governor, Ben Ayade on Tuesday joined the race for the 2023 presidential race on the platform of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
Ayade, who made the disclosure shortly after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the State House, Abuja, said he informed the president of his ambition.
According to him, President Buhari advised him to do more consultation before declaring, adding that he came to seek spiritual and political guidance from the President on who would take over from him come 2023 for continuity sake.
The Cross River governor also pledged to step down for former president Goodluck Jonathan if he is nominated by the ruling party as its presidential candidate.
“I have great respect for former President Jonathan and so I have no challenges whatsoever. I believe that the party leadership will decide on the appropriate candidate that will take our party to victory,” he said.
“And so, if you heard me well, I am just part of the family, absolutely loyal to the president, seeking to run for the president. And I am running.
“But at any point in time that the political leadership of my party, the APC, feels that former President Jonathan is the appropriate candidate that will actually take us to take us to victory, I will turn my support for him.
“I am never, ever going to fight the establishment, the institution, the aristocracy, the spiritual vortex of which God has placed a leader of a country. I will never question the powers of the leader of a country. I have never played politics of antagonism or fight.
“If you know how I became governor, I came governor by offering to support whoever the governor wants and by stroke of luck, I became the candidate. By the same token, I am only here to support the president’s candidate and by a stroke of luck, he said ‘you too, go there and join the race and let me see.”
The governor, who promised to replicate what he did in Cross River, stated that if the presidency was zoned to the South, he was willing to take up the challenge as the only APC governor in the South-South.
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