Unarguably, the leadership of the APC has conducted a free, fair and
peaceful presidential primaries that has thrown up General Buhari as the
party’s candidate. How did he emerge and can he give President Goodluck
Jonathan a run for his money. Leadership's Bayo Oladeji who saw it all,
reports.
That former Head of State, General Muhammadu Buhari is the winner of the
just concluded maiden Presidential Primaries of the APC is no more news
but the process that made him the preferred aspirants out of the five
will continue to be on the lips of many for some time to come.
When some 8,000 leaders and members of the opposition APC gathered at
the Teslim Balogun stadium in Lagos on Wednesday and Thursday, primarily
to elect the presidential candidate for the coming general election,
the unanswered question on the lips of everyone was who would the winner
be?
Although the contestants were five, political pundits agreed that it was
going to be a straight fight between Buhari and Atiku for some obvious
reasons.
However, the outcome proved them wrong
as Kwankaso who was rated to be in the far distant third, came from the
rear to come second at the expense of the hard fighting and shrewd
Atiku. The final result was Buhari- 3430, Kwankaso- 974, Atiku – 954,
Okorocha- 624 and Nda-Isaiah- 10 votes.
Another surprise of the outcome was the 624 votes scored by the Governor
Okorocha whom some believed was in the race not to win but for other
sundry reasons. In fact rumours were flying around, apparently from
Buhari’s camp that he, Kwankaso, and Nda-Isaiah had withdrawn from the
race for Buhari. But signals that came from the camp of the trio faulted
the speculation but the rumour would not go away even when it was time
for speech making by the presidential aspirants. Not a few delegates and
observers were disappointed when none of them stepped down for either
Buhari nor Atiku.
That the odds were against Atiku before the convention were too obvious
to be disputed as the national leader of the party, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu
had shown their prefence in the candidacy of Buhari when some of his
disciples including his wife, Senator Oluremi Tinubu were in attendance
when Buhari was declaring for the presidential race in Abuja whereas
none of them showed up when Atiku did his own.
This made Atiku to resolve to go into the field, using his experience to
counter the move by Tinubu to stop him. Although he went to virtually
every state that made up Nigeria, having meetings with the delegates and
the leaders but if the outcome of the primaries is anything to go by,
his efforts were colossal exercises in futility.
Two powerful forces stood against Turaki Adamawa to become the standard
bearer of the APC for the coming Presidential poll: Tinubu and the APC
governors. The question is what was their problem with Atiku Abubakar?
Perhaps, the problems go beyond Atiku as the plan to make Buhari the
presidential candidate for the next year’s presidential poll began
shortly after the 2011 presidential poll when he scored 12,214,853 votes
while the winner and the incumbent President, Dr Goodluck Jonathan won
with 22, 495,187 votes. Former anti-graft Czar, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu came
to a distant third with 2, 079,151.
According to sources close to Tinubu, no sooner he saw the result he
regretted the aborted alliance between his then party, Action Congress
of Nigeria (ACN) and that of Buhari’s, Congress for Progressives Change
(CPC) on the eve of the election.
“The thought of Asiwaju Tinubu was that if Buhari could win 12 million
votes without support from the South, having the support could make him
the winner and that was how he began selling the idea to Buhari and to
cut a long story short, Buhari agreed and they resolved to merge the two
parties together with a view to making both Buhari and Tinubu run
together.
“Tinubu believes that if the Muslim/Muslim ticket used by MKO Abiola and
Babagana Kingibe could work, the religion factor would not be strong
enough to stop the party from presenting the two on the joint ticket
despite the fact that they are Muslims,” a source disclosed.
Speaking further, the source said, “However, when the talk began, some
leaders of the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP) too began showing
interest, then came those of the Democratic Peoples Party (DPP) and a
faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA). Although General
Buhari did not want the ANPP because of what the leadership of the party
did to him during the last general election when they pushed him to
contest the outcome in court but abandoned him later, but Tinubu
succeeded in convincing him. And that was how the journey began.”
According to him, the duo of Buhari and Tinubu decided to hide their
ambition to allow the merger to be but despite that, the likes of
Senator Ali Modu Sheriff and Chief Tom Ikimi including former Aviation
Minister, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode got to know and that was how the
Muslim-Muslim ticket was leaked to the public. But the two were forced
to adopt Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, a Catholic who had run with Buhari in
2007 as the national chairman of the party to douse the tension but the
controversy could not be wished away.
Despite the opposition to the ticket, LEADERSHIP checks showed that both
Buhari and Tinubu still wanted the ticket to be. Some are even of the
opinion that the problem lies with Tinubu who is being warned against
trusting Buhari with power without being his number two as he could turn
the table against him the way the late President, Umaru Yar Adua did to
Obasanjo.
Atiku was said not to support such a joint ticket and some other leaders
who share the same view brought the matter to the National Working
Committee of the party where the party leadership rejected it but again,
both Buhari and Tinubu did not let the public know about the position
of the party.
However, Atiku had the opportunity to expose the intrigue in an
interview granted THISDAY when the question was put to him over the
Muslim/Muslim ticket and he said there should be a balance adding “In
fact, the party passed a resolution at the NWC that there would not be a
Muslim/Muslim ticket but to announce it, somebody is afraid to announce
it. It is there on the record. The NWC of the party passed a resolution
that there would not be a Muslim/Muslim ticket. So they should go and
announce it”.
Meanwhile, Buhari was to test the water of the ticket in an interview
granted to an online media, THE CABLE, when he said he could pick either
a Christian or a Muslim as his running mate. But former President
Olusegun Obasanjo, who has become a rallying point for the opposition
due to his stiff opposition to the second term of Jonathan warned the
party against presenting a Muslim/Muslim ticket. This forced Tinubu to
meet with Obasano again and he was said to have agreed to drop the idea
but the two did not agree on who becomes the running mate to Buhari.
While Tinubu suggested Professor Osibajo who served as his Commissioner
for Justice, Obasanjo prefers former governor of Osun state, Prince
Olagunsoye Oyinlola but some political associates of Tinubu want a
thoroughbred politician like Senator Olrunnimbe Mamora who was the
speaker, Lagos state House of Assembly when Tinubu was the governor.
According to an insider, it is this type of actions of Atiku which
portray him as being independent minded that would not let Tinubu be the
candidate of the party. The source also referred to the primaries that
were held due to the opposition of Atiku with other aspirants to the
plan to make Buhari the consensus candidate.
“But for the insistence of Atiku for the presidential primaries, Buhari
would have been adopted our consensus candidate. This is one of the
reasons why Asiwaju would not allow such a politician to be the
candidate and he did all he had to stop him,” he said.
As for the governors, since Atiku could not boast of any as his disciple
or associate, making inroad into their camp became a hard nut and this
forced him to leave them and decided to meet with the delegates directly
thinking APC is not like the PDP. But unknowingly to him, the popular
and fire spitting governor of Rivers, Rotimi Amaechi was interested in
running with Buhari, and being the chairman of the polarised Nigerian
Governors Forum, he rallied round the governors for Buhari and became
the unofficial Director General of his campaign organisation. As fate
would have it, his feud with the first Family brought him closer to
Tinubu and they both worked together to stop Atiku at all cost at the
convention.
Thus haven realized what Atiku could do in winning the delegates to his
side, it was Amaechi who worked tirelessly to ensure the 12 APC
governors (except the two of them, Kwankaso and Okorocha who were
contesting) met at Marina and adopted Buhari as their candidate and with
the leakage of the outcome of the meeting to the media, it became the
master stroke that collapsed the ambition of former Vice President.
While the voting was still on-going, the social media and radio were
repeating the story of the adoption of Buhari and this went a long way
to win most delegates to Buhari's camp.
- But the big question now is, can Buhari defeat Jonathan this time?
Does he have what it takes? I guess we will all find it by February 14,
2015.