GOVERNOR Yahaya Bello of Kogi State on Saturday officially declared his intention to run for President in 2023.
Bello made the declaration at a colourful ceremony at the Eagle Square, Abuja.
Surprisingly, though, the governor picked Dr Hafsat Abiola-Costello, the daughter of the late MKO Abiola as the Director-General of his campaign organisation.
Abiola-Costello is the eighth child of the winner of the ill-fated 1993 presidential election and late Kudirat Abiola.
Former Senate Deputy Leader, Jonathan Zwingina, was named the national coordinator of the Yahaya Bello Presidential Campaign Organisation and a former Aviation Minister, Femi Fani-Kayode, as deputy national coordinator.
Abiola-Costello, 47, is a human rights and democracy activist and founder of Kudirat Initiative for Democracy (KIND), which seeks to promote democracy in Nigeria. The organisation was named after her mother Kudirat, who was killed in June 1996 during the struggle to actualize the presidential mandate of her husband.
The Harvard-trained activist also served as Special Adviser MDGs in her home state, Ogun.
Zwingina, 68, hails from Adamawa State. He was at various times Information Committee chairman and Senate Deputy Leader while in the upper chamber between 1999 and 2007.
Fani-Kayode was the Director of Media and Publicity for the President Goodluck Jonathan Campaign Organisation in 2015. He rejoined the APC last year.
Zwingina while speaking at the event described Bello as a detribalized Nigerian, who ruled his state with appointees from other states.
He said, “governor uprooted insecurity from Kogi, the state would have been a breeding ground for kidnapping and banditry, but his leadership skills.”
Yahaya Bello will be hoping to clinch the presidential ticket of the All Progressives Congress ahead of the 2023 race.
The likes of the National Leader of the party, Bola Tinubu, former Governor of Imo State, Rochas Okorocha, the Chief Whip of the Senate, Orji Uzor Kalu have declared their intention to run on the platform of the ruling party.
