While Atiku has insisted on the APC conducting primaries to pick its candidate for the February 2015 presidential election, supporters of Buhari and some top leaders of the opposition party are pressing for a consensus arrangement in favour of the former military leader.
Nigerian Pilot learnt that the lobbyists for a sole APC presidential candidate have approached Atiku and Kwankwaso to drop their ambition and allow Buhari to fly the party’s flag. It was also learnt that top leaders of all the parties that merged into APC at various levels have been contacted by Buhari’s supporters to prevail on Atiku and Kwankwaso to support a Buhari presidency.
One of the Buhari lobbyists is the Benue State Chairman of the Conference of All Nigeria Political Parties, CNPP, Baba Agan, who yesterday asked Atiku and others jostling for the APC ticket to step down for Gen. Buhari.
He made the call in Makurdi, the state capital, where he said that Abubakar, who has declared his presidential ambition and others yet to do so should jettison their plans.
Agan said with the damage the country has undergone in recent times, only someone like Buhari who has unblemished antecedents in public service, could restore the country’s lost glory, urging Nigerians to endorse his candidature for a better tomorrow.
The CNPP chieftain, while wooing support for Buhari, further argued that it is rare to have someone with clean record of public service, devoid of indictment in one way or the other, even in the past that could withstand the former Head of State in terms of transparency and accountability in leadership management.
He stressed that these rare qualities were second to none. He enjoined the need for the likes of Abubakar and others to set aside their ambition and support Buhari to better the party’s chances of clinching power in 2015.
Agan also reasoned that the situation pervading political landscape in the country requires people with ability and the knowledge to effect improvement towards the well being of its citizenry and to further enhance their condition of living.
According to him, “the stalemate which retarded development is due to lack of vision on the part of leadership and also corruption enmeshed in every strata and facet of human endeavor. And once we are able to do away with such phenomenon, the country will bounce back to reckoning.”
A close ally of Buhari, who would not want to be identified, confirmed to TheCable online news medium, that Kwankwaso had been under intense pressure to step down for Buhari.
According to the source, “We know for sure that Kwankwaso is not really interested in being president. He basically wants to be relevant at the federal level after leaving office as governor, and he can be rest assured of being a federal player should Buhari win.
“He (Kwankwaso) is one politician who is committed to having power return to the north. We believe that this consuming passion of his can make him relinquish his aspiration in support of a more viable aspirant sure to sway the votes in APC’s favour. We are really working on Kwankwaso as regards this and we will see him yielding eventually,” Another ally also said.
It is now common to see supporters of the former head of state campaigning for his adoption as the consensus candidate of the party ahead of the February 14, 2015 presidential election.
Following APC’s reluctance to toe the path of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which has already adopted President Goodluck Jonathan as its sole candidate, loyalists of Buhari are now putting pressure on other candidates to voluntarily withdraw for him.
Supporters of Buhari have been holding talks with Kwankwaso in order to persuade him into stepping aside to allow the push for a northern consensus candidate that would face Jonathan at the polls.
Kwankwaso, due to vacate office as governor of Kano state by 2015, is also seen as someone who could provide valuable logistic support to Buhari in the presidential primary if it becomes a direct contest between Buhari and former Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar.
A high-ranking member of Kwankwaso’s cabinet confirmed that the governor was under intense pressure to step down, but said it is “premature to reach a decision now.”
The source feared that supporters of Buhari in Kano were not making it easy for Kwankwaso and this has to be sorted out first.
Crisis is currently rocking the Kano chapter of the APC, with those who defected from PDP pitching against the defunct parties that merged to become APC.
Buhari is known to have mass appeal in Kano, where he won in 2003, 2007 and 2011. This will however not save him as the presidential primary is an indirect election and Kwankwaso is in control of most of the Kano delegates.
Odigie-Oyegun accused of bias
Meanwhile, a political group under the aegis of Southern Mandate has accused the APC National Chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, of double standard, saying it would soon stage a mass protest to demand for his sack over what the group described as “his bias to a presidential aspirant at the expense of others.”
The group being headed by one of the aides to Edo State governor and founding father of CPC in the state, (names withheld) said it has discovered a plot by Odigie-Oyegun and other National Executive Members towards adoption of former military head of state, Gen. Buhari as the party’s sole candidate for the presidential race in 2015, adding that such move will spell doom for Oyegun led executives.
Southern mandates, a group that consists mainly of chairmen and secretaries of the defunct Congress for Progressives Change, CPC in the 17 southern states, held series of meetings at the weekend in Abuja and Edo state respectively and declared that they had reached an agreement to support a younger presidential aspirant, Governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso instead of General Buhari.
A strong member of the group who attended the meeting but pleaded not to be named in print said, “Our 2011 experience has shown that Buhari is not a good product we can market in the southern states, the few elites backing him do not have followers anywhere in the south. We have successfully secured leaders of all the legacy parties in the South; even leaders of ACN are already buying our idea. We are going to do everything possible to scuttle Buhari’s ambition this time around,” he boasted.
Despite this outcry, the APC national chairman had in the last NEC meeting of the party reiterated the stand of the party not to zone its presidential slot.
“No, we are not zoning. We want the best Nigerians from any part of this country to govern the country because people have suffered enough, the person who puts food on your table is your brother but if your brother is depriving you food you won’t say just because he is your brother and vote for him,” he had stated.
However, the National Publicity Secretary of the party, Alhaji Lai Muhammed said there was no iota of truth in the group’s accusation, describing it as cheap blackmail.
“The allegations are cheap. There is no iota of truth in that allegation, I can assure you, ‘ he said.
Ahead of the party’s presidential primaries slated for early December, the party seems headed for broke as Atiku and Kwankwaso have vowed not to allow for any consensus candidate. This according to insiders is given the party leadership of the party sleepless nights and has even forced the former governor of Lagos State and the leader of the party, Bola Tinubu to visit the most unlikely of place, Ota to confer with former President Obasanjo, who is a member of the PDP.
After Tinubu’s visit to Obasanjo last week, the former governor was quoted as saying he went in to discuss the fate of Obasanjo’s boys gunning for the presidential ticket of the APC. “We’ve taken observation of his former boys who are running for presidency in our party, All Progressives’ Congress (APC), and what he (Obasanjo) has to say about them.”
These ‘boys’ are understood to be Kwankwaso, who served Obasanjo as defence minister and Atiku who was Obasanjo’s vice president for eight years.
Source: Nigerian Pilot
No to Buhari, Kwankwaso, Saraki and others.
ReplyDeleteNa Atiku we want oh!!!!
Atiku 2015! The CHANGE we need.
#ANigeriaForAll