The recent visit of Bola Tinubu, the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to Pa Reuben Fasoranti, the Emeritus Leader of the pan-Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere, was allegedly designed to rubbish the earlier endorsement of Peter Obi (Labour Party) believed to have been solely done by Chief Ayo Adebanjo, the group’s Acting National Leader.
POLITICS NIGERIA reports that according to a reliable source, the visit was well-hatched and successfully executed by Tinubu’s loyalists who are members of the ruling APC within Afenifere.
“It (visit) was designed to rubbish the decision of Chief Adebanjo to single-handedly endorse Peter Obi without recourse to other leaders of the group including Pa Fasoranti,” the source said.
“Do you know that the Akure meeting was actually a counter-coup? The meeting was not convened at the instance of the Afenifere leadership but by another Yoruba group known as Conscience of the Yoruba Nation (COYN) which comprises politicians with sympathy for the ruling All Progressives Congress and prominent Yoruba leaders.”
Crisis rocked Afenifere when a faction of the group declared its support for Tinubu during the former Lagos State governor’s visit to leaders of the group in Akure, Ondo State.
Fasoranti and other Afenifere chiefs were also said to have prayed for the APC presidential flag-bearer.
The endorsement was, however, dismissed by the acting leader of the socio-cultural group, Adebanjo, who maintained that the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Obi, remained Afenifere’s choice, adding that Fasoranti had no constitutional authority to act as the leader of the organisation.
