President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday said he has no preferred aspirant for the presidential ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
The APC will hold its national convention from Monday to Tuesday to elect a candidate for the 2023 presidential election in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city.
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, former transportation minister Rotimi Amaechi, former Lagos State governor Bola Tinubu and governors of Ekiti; Kayode Fayemi, Kogi; Yahaya Bello; Ebonyi; Dave Umahi and Senate president Ahmad Lawan are among the front liners for the APC presidential ticket.
The president has held separate meetings with top party officials, governors, and presidential aspirants while rumours continue to linger that he might announce his preferred successor during one of the engagements.
Buhari’s meeting with governors from Nigeria’s northern region today culminated with reports of APC national chairman Abdullahi Adamu allegedly announcing Lawan as the party’s consensus candidate.
Amid opposition of the governors to the Senate president’s rumoured emergence as a consensus candidate, Buhari in a statement by presidential spokesman Garba Shehu said delegates of the party should be allowed to vote and decide who will emerge as the party’s presidential candidate.
Buhari, according to Shehu, told 14 governors of northern states that he has “no preferred candidate,” has “anointed no one,” and is determined to ensure that “there shall be no imposition of any candidate on the party.”
“You were elected as I was. Have a clear mind as I have. God gave us the chance; we have no reason to complain,” Buhari said. “We must be ready to take pain as we take the joy. Allow the delegates to decide. The Party must participate, nobody will appoint anybody.”
Chairman of the Northern Governors Forum, Governor Simon Bako Lalong and Governor Abubakar Atiku Bagudu of the Progressive Governors Forum, insisted on their position to elect a presidential candidate from the southern region of the country.
Shehu said the governors apologised to the President for the leakage of their signed memorandum which was not in support of any particular candidate and gave assurances to the President on their readiness to accept his leadership on the matter.
Northern governors kick against choice of Lawan as consensus candidate
As the national convention of the ruling All progressive congress (APC) gathers momentum, governors of the party from the northern part of the country are opposed to the purported adoption of the Senate President Ahmad Lawan as the consensus presidential flagbearer of the party.
A source close to one of the governors maintained that Lawan cannot be forced on the northern governors to adopt during the election of the flagbearer of the party.
Adamu, who faulted the widely held notion that the party had agreed to zone the exalted seat of the presidency to the South, claimed that the party arrived at the choice of Lawan after consultation with President Muhammadu Buhari.
The choice of Lawan incidentally coincided with the meeting by the Northern governors with President Buhari over the issue relating to the adoption of the consensus candidate of the party.
A source, who asked not to be named, assured that the governors would definitely convince President Buhari to adhere to their earlier position on the need to rotate power to the South in the line with the need to ensure fairness and justice in the polity.
“Be rest assured that we will have an elective convention. That is what the delegates want. The governors would not agree to adopt Lawan after their earlier resolution for power shift to the South,” the source noted.
Effort to reach the spokesperson of the party, Felix Morka, on the purported endorsement of Lawan by the party failed to yield results as he did not respond to the issue.
It is believed that members of the APC national working committee (NWC) who are opposed to the adoption of Lawan have demanded the conduct of an elective convention where delegates would be allowed to vote for any of the presidential aspirants of their choice.
The Guardian
