ANALYSIS: Is Buhari leading APC on the right track?
Before jetting out to Spain on Tuesday, President Muhammadu Buhari threw a bombshell; he wants to be the sole person to pick the candidate of his All Progressives Congress (APC) to slug it out with the opposition parties in the 2023 presidential race. However, the president put it in a more arrogant way, when he addressed the Progressive Governors Forum (PGF) Tuesday night.
He said: “In keeping with the established internal policies of the Party and as we approach the Convention in a few days, therefore, I wish to solicit the reciprocity and support of the Governors and other stakeholders in picking my successor, who would fly the flag of our party for election into the office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in 2023.”
Here, Buhari is already assuming that his pick will automatically be his successor by winning the presidential election.
President Buhari’s submission before the governors is generating ripples in the land. Is it democratic for him to bypass party structure, machinery and members to hand pick choice candidate, without affecting the sensibilities of those who have indicated interest to contest the post?
Speculation has been rife that APC was trying to play smart by constantly postponing its presidential primaries. Analysts contended that the president, in cahoots with the National Chairman, who was his plant, Adamu Abdullahi, was bent on imposing a candidate on the party, but were looking for the best way to carry out the coup.
The president knows the immense powers of the governors. Realizing that they hold the ace in their respective states, he decided to address them to rail role them into his sole succession agenda.
Going down memory lane, the president emerged as the candidate of the APC in 2015, not through consensus arrangement but through primaries, which was bitterly fought in Lagos. His emergence in 2019 was as a result of his position as the sitting president and the principle of first refusal.
Interestingly, the same man is trying to turn himself into a ‘super delegate’, to pick the candidate of his party. He was accorded respect at the convention of the party in Abuja, last March, with the emergence of his candidate, Adamu Abdullahi, who incidentally was the least popular among the contenders for the office of the national chairman of the party.
The president cajoled other aspirants to withdraw from the race, which paved the way for Abdullahi to be the sole candidate of the party at the convention.
With the successful completion of the presidential primaries of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), opinion had been expressed that APC would toe the same line and allow a free and fair primary without recourse to consensus arrangement, which is undemocratic.
Questions are also being asked why Buhari waited this long. Twenty-eight aspirants picked forms at N100 million each to contest the primary. They have invested their time, energy, emotion and further resources, criss-crossing the Nigerian landscape for delegates and suddenly, they are being asked to accept consensus arrangement.
APC may inadvertently be digging its grave by allowing Buhari be the sole delegate to pick its presidential flagbearer. Buhari is not known to be a pan Nigerian president. This has been reflected in his appointments since his assumption of office, which heavily favour his Fulani tribe. Peradventure he picked a northerner, that will surely work against the party at the poll, unlike if a northerner emerges at the primary in a free and fair contest.
Buhari, as an outgoing president, does not have much power to dictate to the party. Besides, his electoral value has diminished, with his performance in office. His cult like following, especially in the north, has fizzled out. The president has frittered away the immense goodwill, with which he came into office. He has lost most of his ardent supporters to incompetence and ethnic chauvinism.
Buhari does not qualify to be the sole delegate to pick his party’s presidential flagbearer.
