Speaker of the Kwara State House of Assembly, Yakubu Salihu-Danladi, has denied nursing an ambition to contest the 2023 governorship election in the state.
Yakubu in a statement on Thursday denounced a statement being peddled around by a group that has been endorsed for the Kwara governorship election in 2023 having come from Kwara North Senatorial zone of the state.
Recall that a political pressure group; Kwara North Stakeholders Consultative Forum (KNSCF) has led agitation that the governorship slot be zone to Kwara North in 2023.
The Speaker in a statement signed by Abdulkadir Yusuf, Chief Press Secretary to Speaker said that Yakubu had no ambition to contest the governorship of the state in 2023.
According to the statement, the Speaker is presently supporting the second-term ambition of governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq as he is trying to promote synergy between the Executive and the Legislature.
Yusuf said, “Our attention has been drawn to a cooked-up story by a faceless group or individual on an alleged endorsement of the 2023 Kwara North Governorship bid by the Rt. Hon. Engr. Yakubu Danladi-Salihu, the Speaker Kwara State House of Assembly.To start with, the last time the Speaker Engr. Danladi-Salihu visited Baruten was in the first week of December during the annual Gani festival and subsequent receipt of scores of the members of the opposition into the fold of the ruling party, the APC. Therefore, Speaker Danladi did not hold any meeting with anyone in Baruten or elsewhere on the 2023 Kwara North Agenda, we challenge the purveyor of the fake news to prove this wrong. The position of the Rt. Hon. Speaker concerning the agitation of the 2023 Kwara North Agenda is clear and simple, so any attempt to drag his name into it unnecessarily to heat the polity or create artificial tension in the political space should be outrightly disregarded.For a very long time, Rt. Hon. Engr. Danladi-Salihu has elected to throw his weight behind the second term ambition of His Excellency, Mallam AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq as his constitutional right, more importantly, as the Governor is performing wonderfully well to the admiration of all – unprecedented developments and achievements of the AbdulRahman led administration could be seen across the three Senatorial Districts especially the Kwara North.The synergy and friendly relationship of the Executive-Legislative under Gov AbdulRazaq and Speaker Danladi is in the interest of the public especially Kwara masses and this is producing significant improvement in the lives of the citizenry.Therefore, Engr. Danladi-Salihu is fully committed to delivering more dividends of democracy through legislation and the re-election of Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq for a second term in 2023.”