2015 APC Presidency

2015 APC Presidency:
Fierce battle for Tinubu’s
endorsement
on november 16, 2014 at 9:50 am in
politics
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Buhari and Atiku
By Our Reporters
Fresh facts emerged yesterday that
contenders for the presidential
ticket of the All Progressives
Congress, APC, have intensified their
bid to get the endorsement of
Ashiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
The five contenders – former military
Head of State, Muhammadu Buhari;
former Vice President Atiku
Abubakar; Speaker of the House of
Representatives, Aminu Waziri
Tambuwal; Kano State governor,
Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso; and
publisher of Leadership Newspapers,
Sam Nda-Isaiah – are said to be
appealing to various sentiments
with a view to getting the former
Lagos State governor, who is the
most prominent APC leader but who
is yet to come out openly to any of
them.
As the deadline for the presentation
of a presidential flag-bearer inches
closer, Sunday Vanguard learnt that
all the contenders for APC’s ticket are
now pulling all possible stops
ranging from family linkages, to
political alliances, business
relationship as well as sentiments
bordering on contemporary realities.
In fact, aspirant by aspirant, Sunday
Vanguard was made to understand
that the pre-eminence of their
relationship with Tinubu would play
a major role in determining who
gets the ticket.
Most importantly, leaders of the APC
are agreed on a common possibility:
That managing a post-presidential
convention rancor could cost the
party more, than having a house
where interests are subsumed for
the larger good of the party.
For instance, the Buhari camp is said
to be banking on the very obvious
fact that, without Tinubu and the
former military head of state, there
could never have been any party in
the first instance because “it was the
merger between the Action
Congress of Nigeria, ACN, and the
Congress for Progressive Change,
CPC, that gave birth to the APC”. An
aide to Buhari said, And you cannot
talk of APC without talking about
Tinubu and Buhari. How that
important relationship would today
be sacrificed on the altar of mere
exigency is unfathomable”.
For Kwankwaso, it was learnt that
the relationship between Tinubu
and the Kano State governor did not
just start in APC. “Mind you, both
men were in the National Assembly
during the turbulent days of the
Third Republic. And both men are
united in pursuing the need to
ensure that the APC wrests power
from Jonathan next year because
they both have come to realize that
the only way to rescue Nigeria from
total collapse is to remove Jonathan
from office. The feeling is mutual
and the respect is also mutual. Both
men are in talks and nothing is
etched in stone regarding where the
interest would swing”, a Kwankwaso
ally said.
Sam Nda-Isaiah’s decision to pitch
his tent with the APC, sources said,
may not be unconnected with his
progressive ideals which he
continues to propagate in his
column. But beyond that, a Tinubu
confidant said that “people on the
outside seem to forget that Ashiwaju
has a way of keeping his cards close
to his chest and, just as Babatunde
Raji Fashola emerged from the blues
and became the Lagos State
governor in 2007, all the contenders
for the presidential ticket of the
party today stands almost an equal
chance of getting Ashiwaju’s nod”.
The most interesting of the
permutations is the relationship
between Tinubu and Atiku.
In fact, Sunday Vanguard gathered
from a Tinubu insider that “Atiku’s
decision to finally dump the Peoples
Democratic Party, PDP, for the APC
was never a flight of fancy”. The
insider added: “Recall that the fight
to stop Olusegun Obasanjo’s
impunity as President which Atiku
spearheaded got the support of
Tinubu. And whereas both men
were in different political parties,
their relationship dates back to their
days in the Social Democratic Party,
SDP. The Tinubu that some people
do not know is more potent that the
Tinubu that people see at political
rallies or social gatherings. What the
Turaki and Tinubu have agreed on is
that a level playing field is a
condition-precedent to having a
united house”.
In the case of Tambuwal, APC sources
said that unlike others who went for
the purchase of the presidential
nomination forms, the Speaker of
the House of Representatives had
the form bought for him. “That in
itself speaks volume of the goodwill
he has. But he has himself said he is
still consulting. And he knows that
quicksand of politics makes the
game a very dicey one so nothing
can be cast in stone”, one of his aides
said.
Indeed, Tambuwal’s emergence as
Speaker against PDP’s zoning
arrangement could not have been
possible without the support of
opposition reps in ACN and CPC.
Last night, one of Tinubu’s very
associates disclosed to Sunday
Vanguard that even as the APC
National Leader keeps his card close
to his chest, “one thing is
paramount: The overall interest and
success of the party supersede
anybody’s ambition