*Pledges to support Jonathan if APC fields him
By Agu Agu
Governor of Cross River State, Ben Ayade, has joined the race for the 2003 presidential election, on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
He announced this to State House correspondents on Tuesday after he met for consultations with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Aso Rock Villa, Abuja.
Emerging from the meeting, which he described as one of the longest he has had with the President, Ayade, said he initially came to extend his support to Buhari to help him choose a successor, only for the President to suggest to him to contest for the seat himself.
The Governor, who ends his second tenure in Cross River next year, said that if the APC zones the presidency to the South of the country, he is willing to take up the challenge as the only APC Governor in the South-South.
Ayade said he would replicate all over Nigeria his exploits in Cross River State, adding that if elected president, he would focus on security, economy, electricity and employment.
Asked to react to unconfirmed report that the APC may present former President Goodluck Jonathan as the consensus candidate for the 2023 presidential election, Ayade said: “I have great respect for 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. I am just part of the family absolutely loyal to the President, seeking to run for the president.
“I am running, but at any point in time that the political leadership of my party, the APC, feels that President Jonathan is the appropriate candidate that will actually take us 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.
“I came governor by offering to support whoever the then Governor wanted and by stroke of luck, I became the candidate.
