A newspaper columnist and lecturer, Farooq A. Kperogi has revealed why some people who control the levers of the ruling All Progressives Congress will not want neither Bola Tinubu nor Vice President Yemi Osinbajo to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari in 2023.
Kperogi in an opinion piece titled “OPINION: Tinubu knows he’s lost out. Now he wants to burn it all down” argued that there seems to be a coalescence of opinions in the upper reaches of APC’s hierarchy in the North that the party’s nominee should come from the South-South because they imagine that only a weak, politically rootless candidate from the region will guarantee their influence and continued access to the public till.
“A section of APC’s northern power brokers wants former President Goodluck Jonathan to be APC’s standard bearer not only because they think he is easily manipulatable but also because he would be a lame-duck, term-limited president who would hand power back to them after four years.
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“Although “Constitution Alteration Bill Number 16,” which Muhammadu Buhari signed into law in 2018, makes it unconstitutional for vice presidents and deputy governors who complete the first terms of deceased or impeached and removed presidents and governors to run for election twice, many people pointed out that it can’t be applied retroactively to Jonathan.
“Nonetheless, in a January 2012 ruling against Timipre Sylva of Bayelsa, Murtala Nyako of Adamawa, Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko of Sokoto, Ibrahim Idris of Kogi and Liyel Imoke of Cross Rivers, the Supreme Court said no Nigerian can constitutionally occupy an executive position for more than eight years.
“So, were Jonathan to be elected president in 2023, he can’t constitutionally seek another term in 2027. That’s appealing to the rapacious APC vultures who are circling around and feeding fat on the carcass of power in Aso Rock.
He said another northern APC faction wants Central Bank governor Godwin Emefiele to be APC’s nominee because of his deep embeddedness in the labyrinthine network of high-level corruption that the Aso Rock cabal has been enmeshed in since 2015.
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“Plus, as a Delta Igbo man who was born and raised in Lagos, it is expected that he would be a political orphan in all the political regions of the South and would be dependent on his political benefactors in the North for survival.
“Not being a “core Igbo,” he can’t be “owned” by the Southeast and being “Igbo” in the South-South, he’d be a minority among minorities. Of course, that is an extremely naïve political calculation.
According to him, while the President may have mysteriously entertained the idea of endorsing Timipre Sylva as his successor, his preference didn’t seem to have had any buy-in from his own political operatives.
Similarly, Kperogi argued that Ekiti State governor Kayode Fayemi is another dark horse.
“Certain powerful political forces in northern APC think he is tame, mild-mannered, and politically unrooted enough to not upset the apple-cart should it become inevitable that power should be transferred to the Southwest to compensate the region for providing the crucial support the APC needed to win— or successfully rig— the last two elections. Again, that is naïve reasoning.
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“But what has become obvious is that the two main criteria that honchos at APC have deployed to determine who will get their party’s nomination for president are guarantees of unfettered post-election access to the seat of power and vulnerability of the political base of the future president, which would require a contingent linkage with northern politicians for purely existential reasons.
“Tinubu doesn’t fit the bill. He is fiercely independent, sees himself as an institution, is thoroughly rooted in the Southwest, has one of the most formidable political structures in the country and, most importantly, frames his presidency as an ethnic project.
He said the cabal knows that Tinubu’s ascendancy to the presidency will effectively draw the curtains on their reign.
“With the nixing of direct primaries in APC, it’s now almost certain that Tinubu doesn’t stand even a snowball’s chance in hell of emerging as his party’s flag bearer in 2023. Nor, of course, does Yemi Osinbajo, who has no political machinery to propel his campaign to begin with.
“Tinubu is now undertaking what a friend in the Southwest has characterized as a “subversive tour” of Yoruba land where he takes subtle and not-too-subtle pot shots at the Aso Rock cabal.
“He has reduced his desperation for ascendancy to the presidency as the quest for a “Yoruba presidency,” perhaps in response to the artfully ethnic character of the Aso Rock cabal’s succession politics.
“He no longer even cares to pretend that he wants a pan-Nigerian presidency, which is interesting given that had said in 1997 that he didn’t believe in one Nigeria because he wasn’t having his way.”
“He will not support a South-South APC presidential candidate and will certainly give his all to scuttle APC’s chances in the Southwest in 2023 should that happen. However, should Fayemi become APC’s nominee, Tinubu’s resistance in the Southwest would be hampered by the ethnic solidarity of the Yoruba electorate, which would constitute a really brutal blow to him.