By Chibisi Ohakah
Going by the number of desperate moves by some interested quarters in the All Progressives Congress [APC], even as they are not relenting, and the cold attitude of the leader of the party, Senator Ahmed Bola Tinubu, political watchers believe it is not yet Uhuru for the second term bid of the President Muhammadu Buhari. It is believed that the damage done to the fortunes and goodwill of the party by the Buhari administration, has astronomically grown the disenchantment in the party that it may drown come 2019.
In the second week of January 2018, seven All Progressives Congress (APC) governors rose from a meeting in Kaduna with the request to President Muhammadu Buhari to seek re-election in 2019. Two days after, all the governors stormed the Aso Rock presidential villa in Abuja with their request. Present at the meeting were Nasir El Rufai of Kaduna, Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano, Yahaya Bello of Kogi and Abubakar Bello of Niger, Simon Lalong of Plateau, Ibrahim Geidam of Yobe and Jibrilla Bindow of Adamawa. All the governors, except Lalong, attended the Friday Muslim prayers with the President at the villa, and had lunch together thereafter.
Kaduna governor, El Rufai told journalists after the meeting; “Those of us you see here want the president to contest the 2019 election, we have no apologies for that,” he said.
He explained that they believe in Mr. President and want him “to continue running the country in the right direction.” According to him, the governors, mostly first termers, are in interested in “continuity and stability”.
A few days after the historic visit by the pro-Buhari 2019 governors, the APC senator representing Kaduna Central, Shehu Sani, condemned the call for Buhari to contest again in view of his disappointing first tenure performance and widespread killings going on in the country.
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He said the call for Buhari to contest again is insensitive on the side of the governors given that it was barely 24 hours after 73 persons killed by suspected herdsmen in Benue were buried.
Taking to his official twitter handle last Saturday, the vocal senator described the governors’ endorsement as unfortunate. “Seven governors in the Villa asking President Buhari to run at this material time, when all hands should be on deck to advice or support him to end the mindless bloodletting and carnage in the country, is most unfortunate. Human reasoning and human conscience where art thou?” he queried
The senator was not alone. Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, said that for anybody to be canvassing second term for President Muhammadu Buhari is sickening, and that Nigeria was long overdue for reconfiguration. Speaking in Lagos on Monday, Soyinka said it was sickening for some people to be canvassing second term in office for President Buhari midway into his first tenure, saying he did not want to be part of such discuss
The pro-Buhari 2019 tacticians are not just pushing the endorsement handle, they are also looking at tampering, if possible, the party leadership structure to ensure that the Buhari 2019 project is bought and delivered by the party. Investigations reveal that a strong lobby group within the APC is currently pushing for elongation of the tenure of the party’s current national working committee led by former Edo State governor, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun. The group considers that the loyalty of the national chairman to Mr. President is very high, given the former’s open support to Buhari’s candidate against that of APC leader, Senator Ahmed Bola Tibubu, in the Ondo governorship elections.
The lobby group, currently shuttling round the party stakeholders to seek support, are flying the argument that Oyegun executive committee and the NWC should be allowed to stay in office a little longer to enable them organise the presidential primaries that would produce Buhari later in the year as the candidate of APC in next year’s presidential election. Oyegun and other members of the NWC were elected on June 13, 2014 for a four-year tenure, which would end the same time this year.
Although the former NADECO chieftain can seek re-election as APC national chairman, the thinking is that given the cracks in the party, the guarantee that he will emerge as national chairman of the party in a national convention is slim, and therefore cannot be banked upon. So, the option of a small term elongation may be sought to enable him ‘do the job’ after which he would step down. The tenure elongation idea, Orient Daily gathered, is kind-of gaining grounds within the party, especially as it sounds immodest and non-ambitious on the side of the Oyegun.
Whereas those behind the pro-Buhari governors are the same as those pushing for the extension of the national chairman, they believe extending the NWC’s tenure would help to ensure stability and avoid internal disruptions, disaffections, and realignments that usually follow elective conventions. A dependable source told Orient Daily in Abuja that the lobbyists are pushing for a three-month term elongation for the APC national chairman.
According to the source, the approval for a three-month extension of tenure for the NWC may be sought through a non-elective convention to be held in June 2018. They believe that it would be too risky to take the party through two elective conventions in one year due to the negative fallouts of such exercises. Also, the possibility of the party not resolving the possible litigations that may arise from the elections in an elective national convention in good time may spell doom for the ruling party ahead of the presidential election in February 2019.
But analysts believe that as long as the Tinubu factor is coldly missing in the current push for Buhari to return in 2019, there is serious reason for concern in the possible achievement of the objectives of the group. Tinubu is seen as a metaphor representing all the aggrieved and abandoned members of the APC nationwide. With this group – dotting the various strata of the party – still withholding their nod to the Buhari 2019 movement, it is hard to see how the campaign will succeed. A particular observer said it is difficult to see how any presidential candidate can emerge in the party without the blessing or input of the one called the Lion of Bourdillon.
Despite the keys of the Aso Rock office being held by President Buhari, it is believed that a large and key segment of the party are still loyal to Tinubu, who once called for the resignation of Oyegun at the peak of the crises which erupted on the way to nominating the party flag bearer in the Ondo State gubernatorial elections in late 2016. Whereas the eventual winner, Rotimi Akeredolu had won the party ticket once in the past, and the Buhari/Oyegun camp felt like compensating him with yet another opportunity, Tinubu chose to support Olusegun Abraham in that election. Tinubu was forced to lick his wounds as his candidate was trounced by 669 votes in the primaries.
Before then, Tinubu was used to lording his candidates on the party, anywhere countrywide. He felt he owned the party and only brought in Oyegun and made him national chairman, so he could not openly and rudely query his authority in the party. Pronto, Tinubu wrote an open letter to Oyegun on the pages of the newspapers, calling him names and conclusively asked him to resign his position as national chairman of the APC. There is no evidence that the two leaders have mended fences since that open confrontation. Tinubu’s coldness, evidently supported by the sympathy of the Yoruba states hence no evidence of participation in the Buhari 2019 project, is interpreted to foretell pay-back time for Buhari and Oyegun. In the number efforts made by pundits to draw Tinubu into any side of the Buhari 2019 bid, the former Lagos State governor has pulled through with a no-side card. It has been really difficult for the Buhari 2019 to effectively kick off.
Analysts believe that those in Tinubu’s camp, watching from the fence, are fervently hoping for something to happen that will cause the Buhari 2019 bid to collapse, and another option to show up, may be in the mould of a new coalition – such as the current handshake across the Niger spearheaded by the Afenifere and Ohanaeze socio cultural groups, which held in Enugu last weekend more than expected, hence the complete failure of effective take off of the campaign. For instance, one expected that all the northern APC states should be in the vanguard of Buhari 2019. At the end of the count, the governors of Sokoto, Benue, Borno, Buhari’s home state, Katsina, Kebbi, Zamfara and Bauchi are yet to show solidarity to the 2019 bid.
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Last Saturday, the Oyo state governor, Abiola Ajumobi, snubbed the Buhari 2019 delegation that came to inaugurate the South West zone of the Muhammadu Buhari Osinbajo (MBO) Dynamic Support Group. Instead, Ajimobi reportedly attended a rally at the APC secretariat in the Oke-Ado area of Ibadan. People attributed the governor’s absence to his rift with communications minister, Adebayo Shittu, who is the chairman of the Muhammadu Buhari Osinbajo (MBO) Dynamic Support Group.
Despite the support by the governors and members of the party national working committee [NWC], there is no consensus yet on the kind of arrangement that would be adopted to hand the party’s ticket to Buhari without undermining the democratic process and incurring the anger of some critical stakeholders. At the party’s last NEC meeting, members unanimously passed a vote of confidence on Buhari, saying he has performed satisfactorily. The national chairman also got a vote of confidence. But all seem to be lip service hence the still-limping performance of the Buhari 2019 campaign train
Other parties have criticised the ruling party for failing to hold a convention in the last two years in contravention of its own constitution. However, APC at its last NEC meeting in November, tried to correct the anomaly by directing that a non-elective convention be held before the end of 2017. But the leadership of the party shifted the non-elective convention to this year, saying that it would like to align activities leading to its convention with the 2019 election timetable to be released by the Independent National Electoral Commission. Observers say these are all evidence that the APC is swimming in confusion and disarray
With these myriad of problems, especially with regards to the presidential flag bearer factor, political observers wonder how APC will be ready for the coming elections. According to the recently released INEC timetable, collection of nomination forms by political parties for national and state elections will be done between August 11 and 24, 2018, while conduct of primaries, including resolution of disputes for national and state elections, will be between August 18 and October 7, 2018. Also, primaries for FCT Area Council elections will hold between September 4 and October 27, 2018. The commencement of campaigns for the presidential and National Assembly elections have been slated for November 18, 2018, with the campaigns to end February 14, 2019. For the governorship and state assembly elections, the campaigns will commence December 1, 2018 and end on February 28, 2019.
For many disappointed Nigerians, including non-party members who expected so much from Buhari’s administration, the current discussion about a second term is unthinkable. In the same way, associates and party stakeholders, licking their wounds, like Tinubu, who had been waiting for an auspicious time to get back at the President, are now looking the other way from the campaigners.
A fortnight ago, the Buhari Support Organization (BSO) – in readiness for the commencement of Buhari’s 2019 campaigns – opened their head office in Abuja. In a meeting with the 189 support groups that worked for his 2015 election, the president admonished them that their work required sacrifices, both physically and materially ahead of 2019. Observers, however, think that people may not come cheap for the president this time around given the way the 2015 support groups were later treated. Many career politicians who worked for Buhari’s 2015 election were never compensated. Even the requested list of ground politicians; those who lost at the elections, and were promised positions in the government to enable them support themselves towards 2O19, were abandoned.
“I do not think anybody will join this organisation for material reasons. What you are doing is for the nation and not for me as an individual. Therefore, there is no way you can lose because what you are doing is for posterity,” the President sent words to them, saying.
“It would be interesting to see where these supporters would get their motivation from if they were not supposed to expect anything in return in the normal Nigerian tradition,” an observer said in Abuja
It would appear also that the northern APC governors and their southern Nigeria counterparts seem to be on different pages on the Buhari 2019 agenda. Sensors seem to pick a number of fundamental issues that are dear to southern APC governors that have not been addressed by the current administration. It was not surprising that just as the northern governors endorsed President Buhari for 2019; southern governors went into a summit where they laid out their own agenda. It is believed, and surprisingly so, that southern APC governors seem to need southern PDP governors, especially Ayodele Fayose [Ekiti] Nyesom Wike [Rivers] to push their demand at the federal level.
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