APC Convention: Tinubu faces major hinderance from Buhari

There are insinuations that the national leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, a front line presidential aspirant of the party, could be facing a major hindrance in the contest for the party’s presidential ticket from the president. Party sources and loyalists of Tinubu complained that the refusal of President Muhammadu Buhari to sign the amended re-amended Electoral Act, into law has multiplier effects on certain presidential aspirants in the APC as well as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

According to the party sources, the decline of the President to sign the re-amended Act because of the ‘Statutory Delegates’ addition into the Act by the National Assembly limited the scope of gaining more delegates by the presidential aspirants. They noted that Tinubu and Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State were mostly affected by the decision.

They argued that in the case of Wike, the PDP has more states in the South than in the North, which would have generated more statutory delegates for the Rivers governor in the race for the PDP ticket which he lost to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.

The party sources added that Tinubu would have recruited more statutory delegates across the country in the race for the APC presidential ticket for the 2023 elections than any other presidential aspirant in the party.

They noted that while the federal lawmakers were preoccupied with emasculating the governors, and cutting their wings in the process of electing party candidates for elections, they forgot to accommodate their own interests, which compelled them to re-amended the amended electoral act for the inclusion of statutory delegates which seeks to expand the scope of delegates to primaries of political parties in addition to the ad hoc delegates.

The party sources alleged that the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami SAN, had advised President Buhari against signing the re-amended electoral act to get back at the lawmakers.

The amended electoral act is still a subject of legal contest at the Supreme Court of Nigeria between President Buhari, Malami and the National Assembly. The presidency had approached the Supreme Court for the interpretation of Section 84 of the amended Electoral Act.

Meanwhile, the APC will hold it presidential primaries and national convention on June 6.

The APC presidential ticket for the 2023 elections is being contested by 23 aspirants who bought and processed the N100 million Expression of Interest and Nomination forms of the party. The figure excludes three other aspirants who did not indicated interest in the race but forms were bought for them. In all, the APC had made N26 billion from the sales of only presidential forms.