Analysts believe it will be difficult for the President Buhari to push through his favourite presidential candidate the way he recently anointed a national chairman for the APC.
By Bisi Abidoye
Many men reckoned to be close to President Muhammadu Buhari, whether as political associates or officials of his government, are in the race to succeed him when his tenure ends on May 29, 2023. Each of them has informed him and is counting on his support to pick the ticket of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) for the presidential poll coming up in the first quarter of next year.
Bola Tinubu was pivotal in the formation of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the party which allowed Mr Buhari to be taken seriously for the first time by southern voters in 2015 and which helped him to end his serial losses in presidential elections that began in 2003. Mr Tinubu’s support was also crucial in his reelection in 2019, at a time the president appeared to have long squandered his goodwill with his new voters south of the Niger and Benue rivers.
Yemi Osinbajo has been a loyal and remarkably active deputy, while Rotimi Amaechi as Minister of Transportation has overseen perhaps the most visible achievements of the Buhari presidency. Governor Kayode Fayemi, who has also informed Mr Buhari of his intention to run, served Mr Buhari’s 2015 campaign as director of policy, research and strategy and later as his minister of solid minerals development. All four have declared their intentions to run in the APC presidential primaries.
More of the president’s men may appear in the lineup before delegates gather at the Eagle Square in Abuja at the end of May to nominate the ruling party’s flag bearer. They include Godwin Emefiele, a technocrat inherited by Mr Buhari as Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria who, after taking his role beyond managing monetary policy into essentially financing the government, has transmuted into one of the president’s men. A coordinated campaign for his candidature of the APC has been going on for months in different media, such that some aghast Nigerians, including this newspaper in an editorial, have called on him to deny it or quit his job to pursue the ambition, if indeed he has it.
Also being awaited are three other ministers, Godswill Akpabio, Timipre Sylva and Chris Ngige, as well as one of the closest personal friends of the president, former Ogun governor Ibikunle Amosun. All these men would be expected to inform the president before they jump into the fray. Many of those already on the field are claiming to be the president’s preferred candidate.
According to a Daily Trust report on Thursday, sources at the presidency said Mr Buhari did not object to the plans by all the aspirants to vie but that he was keeping his preference among them close to his chest.
In January when the president was asked of his succession plan during an interview with Channels Television, his response was ambivalent. He said: “2023 is not my problem, I don’t care who succeeds me, let the person come, whoever the person is.”
But then he quickly added that he actually has a favourite candidate, but he would not reveal the name so that person would not be eliminated.
Those remarks have created an environment in which the promoters of many of the aspirants thought to be close to the president have been claiming their man is that veiled preferred candidate.
But Daniel Bwala, a lawyer and popular political pundit, does not believe anyone has been or would be anointed by the president.
