By Jacob Akintunde

Copyright businessday

Elders in the All Progressives Congress in Ondo State under the umbrella of Ondo State APC Elders Movement have declared their readiness to mobilise the electorate in the state to deliver nothing less than 1.5 million votes for President Bola Tinubu come the 2027 Presidential election.

Speaking at their meeting on Monday in Akure, the Ondo state capital, Nimbe Farunkanmi, the Chairman, Ondo State APC Elders Forum said it’s conglomerate of the elders of the party to speak with one voice to unify the party towards ensuring no type of division and crisis would make it impossible for them to achieve more than 90% vote for Tinubu in the next election.

According to him, “this is an elder of the movement for Tinubu continuity, and this is not a case of I’m a support group. This type of meeting is going to be held at the local government, it’s going to be held at the wards, and it’s going to be held at the unit for the Tinubu.”

Jamiu Ekungba, one of the APC elders in Ondo State, who also spoke at the meeting, said, “The essence of this meeting is to bring everybody together so that mobilisation for registration will be by commitment of the elders and everybody. So when we now do the registration for INEC, including the existing one, we’re going to mobilise people to come out and vote the way they have never voted.

“You know, in the last election, we tried it and we were able to achieve it because for the governor to win 366,000 votes was unusual. So, as somebody has said, we are going to deliver 1.5 million votes to Tinubu, and it is possible because currently registered voters in Ondo state are 1.9 million.

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“But the problem is that people don’t come out to vote. So what the elders want to do now is to persuade everybody to come and vote, and we’re going to vote massively for Tinubu in such a way that those states have never voted.

“We are going to call those people who supervised the election, who witnessed the election, to be in those states. So that when we return that figure, nobody could say something happened because it’s going to be real votes.

“We’re going to ask our children wherever they are to come back home and vote, and we’re going to mobilise everybody from the farms, shops, markets to vote, and the vote is going to be massive.

“The point is that I can tell the president to go and be rest assured when those states are delivered with this group of people.”

Speaking in the same vein, Olukemi Iyantan, the wife of the late deputy governor of Ondo State and the current federal commissioner, National Population Commission representing Ondo St, said, ” We are focusing on the achievement and the victory at the poll in 2027 for the re-election of our president, Bola Tinubu.

“The issue is the unity of purpose, how we can form a unified force, especially the creation of the Elders Forum. So whatever the elders do, consult them for their knowledge; it will help us to reach where we are going, unlike before, when we didn’t even have leaders; that’s why you see the party in shambles.

“But now that we have leaders and the elders that are committed to the cause of 2027, the re-election of our president, you know that we can go higher, go everywhere so that we can achieve our aim because we know at every point in time, when you have troubles, we have where we can run to for consultation and for wisdom, which can help us.”

Olumuyiwa Ogunleye, a chieftain of the party, also said, “The essence of this meeting is the elders intervening in trying to unify the party, rally the party around the leader of the party.

“The elders are intervening to ensure there’s no division in the support for Tinubu in Ondo State. All the support groups, all the efforts must be in one place because the main purpose is to give maximum votes possible in Ondo State to President Bola Tinubu in the 2027 general election.

“So we are going to bring all the groups together under one umbrella, which is called ‘Ondo State for Tinubu 2027’ because the governor has set up the caucus and the caucus is statutory. So every other organization will operate under this support group.”