Ekiti State Governor Ayodele Fayose yesterday May 13, 2016,called on the elders in the People Democratic Party (PDP) to take the back seat, stating that “age is a disease”.
While addressing Journalists at the party’s national secretariat in Abuja, he said: “If you are leading as elders and we lost election, then something is wrong; most of the people who were Jonathan’s advisers were elders and we lost election.
“We won’t say they should go but they should take a back seat. In most of the advanced democracies, if you lose election, it is just decent for you to allow other people to try, especially young people.
“I have no apology over that statement, and I am saying it again that if I am struggling for a position with my son, it is ridiculous. I was governor at 42. You need a lot of energy to be a leader, not when they are giving you Panadol to be strong. Age is a disease on its own.
“New generation should take over this party and build it. Anything you are doing and your children do not have insight into it will perish. Since this party started we have always referred to the elder, but are we saying that we should continue to say the younger generation should go to blazes?
“Are you saying that you will call somebody in the village to come and take a position? That era is gone. You have to struggle; you have to make efforts and show that you actually need that position.”
The governor said before now, most of those who held leadership in positions in the party were unwilling characters, “but now willing characters are coming out that is why you see the struggle that much”.
“As a result, a lot of people will be displaced or feel displaced. A lot of people are feeling displayed but it is not displacement as it were,” he said.
He further stated that, “The fact that everybody wants to be relevant in the party shows that the party is strong. If there is no future for PDP, there would be no such struggle.
“Have you seen a party that is not in crisis when it comes to interest and leveraging of interests? Politics is about interests. We will have differences; it is normal in politics but washing your dirty linen in public is bad. Let the young men take over in Nigeria”.
