The South-West chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has appealed to people of the geopolitical zone to embrace Bola Tinubu, the party’s presidential candidate, in 2023.

In an interview, Isaac Kekemeke, APC national vice chairman, South-West, who described Mr Tinubu as their son, said it would be thoughtless of them not to vote for the aspirant.

“Apart from common sense and logic, it is also about sentiment. Our son’s waist deserves the beads and it would be foolhardy of us to adorn the waist of other people’s children with the beads,” he said.

He added, “Tinubu’s waist deserves that bead and it is the turn of the South. Our son has a pedigree. He sets the pace and others follow.” 

Mr Kekemeke said the party would record a landslide victory in the South-West for its presidential candidate.

He admitted that the APC lost narrowly to the Peoples Democratic Party ( PDP) in Oyo and Ondo states in the 2019 presidential election “because of some disunity in the house.”

But he described the success of the PDP in the two states as accidental victories, which should not be used to predict the 2023 presidential election results “because the APC had waxed stronger ever after.

“The PDP should know that it was a one-chance victory because, in the 2020 governorship election in Ondo state, we beat them in almost all the state’s local government areas.

“We had an unprecedented outstanding governorship victory in 2020 because the factors that militate against our success in those states in 2019 were no longer in place.

“So if they talk about 2019, a good sense of simple arithmetics should make them remember Ondo 2020. They are holding on to 2019 but have forgotten the 2020 elections,” he stated.

He boasted that the 2020 victory of the APC at the gubernatorial election in Ondo would be child’s play compared to the landslide victory that the party would record in the entire South-West in 2023 “because all the odds are now against the PDP.

“We are not divided. Our wall is not broken, so no lizards can enter as they did in 2019 when there was a crack.

“They were like lizards that came to play on the opening, but that opening is now closed. It was not just closed today but in 2020, and they saw the result in Ondo.

“Even their recent victory in Osun is not a yardstick to measure the PDP’s popularity in the state. We have an ongoing case at the Election Petitions Tribunal, and we are confident of reclaiming our mandate very soon,” the APC stalwart said.

Mr Kekemeke explained that APC-controlled state governments across the South-West were delivering dividends of democracy within the limit of available resources “while infrastructural revolution was taking place as we can see roads are being built everywhere”.

The APC national vice-chairman said that aside from the fact that “Tinubu is from the South-West geo-political zone, he is the most competent of all the candidates jostling for the office of the nation’s president.

“Nigerians believe the presidency should be rotated between the north and the south every eight years. So, it is now the turn of the south. And Tinubu has a good antecedent that we can talk about from now till tomorrow.

“So the PDP is in trouble. When their candidate was here a couple of weeks ago to flag off their campaign in this region, only a few people were around but when our candidate only came to pay a personal visit, the whole state went agog.

“By the time we bring our campaign here, they will see the difference. We are confident of winning. A 60 per cent win is no winning to us. We are going to beat them big,” he boasted.

(NAN)