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 In fact rumours were flying around, apparently from Buhari’s camp that he, Kwankaso, and Nda-Isaiah had withdrawn from the race for Buhari.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.
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