Tinubu: Why APC Is In Trouble; Former Governor Perfects Plan B

By Chidi Levi

Despite denials, The Source (Magazine) can authoritatively confirm that a faction of the All Progressives Congress, APC aligned to one of the Party’s Leaders and former Lagos State Governor, Ahmed Bola Tinubu, is readying one of the fringe parties as an alternative platform for his Presidential ambition. This is if, as is being strongly speculated, he does not get his Party’s ticket for the 2023 Presidential election.

LEFT IN THE LURCH

Tinubu, in January, declared his intention to run for the Presidential seat next year on the platform of the APC. But there are indications that critical stakeholders in the party, including President Muhammadu Buhari, several APC Governors, and the powerful cabal in Aso Rock, are not enthusiastic about his Presidential project.

Asked by a panel of Channels TV reporters during a live interview in January about anointing a successor, President Buhari affirmed he has indeed pencilled down one, but would not mention his name on the grounds that doing so may put him ( the anointed successor) in harm’s way.

A Party chieftain from the Southwest, who didn’t want his name mentioned told the magazine: “As far as Asiwaju’s presidential ambition is concerned, I can confirm to you that those who he helped to power have now left him in the lurch. They are not buying into his ambition. And this is betrayal. The man gave APC his all, he gave APC life, he gave APC valve. Without him, the party wouldn’t have dislodged the PDP in 2015”

Perhaps. It was Tinubu who delivered the South-West to the APC but the North has consistently been for Buhari since he began his Presidential aspirations. Tinubu only helped to add to the bulk, solid votes that has consistently been Buhari’s.

“He cannot, therefore, claim to have installed Buhari alone, otherwise, why did he not install Nuhu Ribadu or Atiku Abubakar when his former Party, ACN, used them?”, an angry Northerner who said he had become tired of “the Tinubu myth” told this medium.

Dependable Aso Rock and APC sources swore that the former Lagos state governor was not the person Buhari was referring to in that Channels TV interview.

Said one of the sources: “That TV interview greatly unsettled Tinubu. After Buhari made that declaration in the Channels TV interview, Tinubu was jolted; it dawned on him that he is not in the President’s calculations for the APC Presidential ticket”

An APC source told the magazine that the decision of the party’s National Leader to declare his Presidential ambition a few days after the President’s interview “was to keep hope alive and to maintain his grit-determination to pursue the Presidential ambition to its logical conclusion with or without the APC”

“Take this to the bank: Tinubu will be on the ballot paper as a candidate for the 2023 presidential election but not on the platform of APC. Buhari will ensure that APC chooses its candidate through consensus and that consensus candidate will not be Tinubu”, he further told the magazine.

Though the Social Democratic Party, SDP, has denied a possible Tinubu take over of the party with the view to fly its flag in the 2023 Presidential election, findings show that in the coming days, foot soldiers of the former Governor will start emptying into the party to prepare the ground for his eventual grand entry.

First, it was reasoned that having existed with the same name during the ill-fated transition programme of former military dictator, General Ibrahim Babangida, SDP is a party Nigerians can easily connect with.

Secondly, as the party (the old SDP) on which platform the late MKO Abiola contested and won the annulled June I9 1993 Presidential election, SDP still strikes a chord in the consciousness of the Yoruba of the Southwest, the home region of Tinubu and the late politician.

Thirdly, since forming a new Party will be impossible, given the tight timetable of the 2023 elections, SDP approximates to the “progressive” bend of the APC and Tinubu’s former party, the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, which merged with others to form the APC.

This Magazine was told that Tinubu’s camp is determined to inflict unforgettable injury on the APC should the party decide to treat his Presidential aspirant shabbily.

The game plan, it was gathered, is to deny the APC Southwest votes by steering the region towards the SDP.

A Tinubu loyalist who is in the know of the highwire plots asks rhetorically: “Tell me how the APC will win the election with Southwest votes going to the SDP, Southeast and South-South headed to the PDP and Northcentral and Northeast a battleground between the APC and PDP”?

“The APC still has the opportunity to save itself from death, otherwise it will pay a heavy price for mistreating Asiwaju”, he further said.

The APC risks having no gubernatorial candidate in Lagos for next year’s election. As part of the planned fatal blow on the party by the Tinubu camp, Governor Samwo-Olu, it was gathered, will be supported to clinch the APC ticket but will later dramatically emerge as SDP’s substituted candidate on the final date parties are allowed by INEC to substitute their gubernatorial candidates thus, leaving the APC with no opportunity to replace him.

To appeal to the religious sensibilities of the core Muslim Northern states like Kano, Kebbi, Kastina and Jigawa and to divide APC’s vote in that axis, Tinubu, the Magazine was informed is, allegedly, mulling a Muslim running mate to replicate Abiola’s winning strategy in the North in the 1993 Presidential election. But it is not all smooth for Tinubu, even in the South-west.

Meanwhile, Tinubu’s Presidential ambition has continued to receive cold shoulders from some Yoruba elites.

Apart from Afenifere chieftain, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, Chief Olabode George, Senator Babafemi Ojodu is the latest of such elites that have publicly rejected the former governor’s presidential bid.

Describing Tinubu’s Presidential bid as a huge joke and an insult on Nigerians, George who was a former Military Governor of Ondo State and ex-Deputy National Chairman of the PDP, vowed to go into exile if he (Tinubu) emerges President.

On his part, Ojodu said he would rather return to his farm than support Tinubu’s Presidential chase, saying he does not believe in him. His words: “Never! I’ll never support it. Write it down I’ll go back to the farm.If I don’t believe in you, I’ll not work with you or for you.”

Adebanjo had, shortly after the former Lagos State Governor made his Presidential ambition known, declared neither he nor Afenifere would support him.