Mr Abubakar polled 371 votes to beat back a strong challenge by Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike who recorded 237 votes.
Atiku comes againThe Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Saturday night re-nominated its 2019 standard-bearer, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, for the 2019 presidential election.
Mr Abubakar polled 371 votes to beat back a strong challenge by Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike who recorded 237 votes from the 767 delegates accredited for the primary at the Moshood Abiola National Stadium in Abuja.
Other candidates who recorded votes were former Senate President Bukola Saraki (70), Akwa Ibom Governor Udom Emmanuel (38), Bauchi Governor Bala Mohammed (20), former Senate President Pius Anyim (14), former President of the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, Sam Ohuabunwa (1) and only female aspirant, Oliver Diana (1). Four other aspirants recorded zero votes.
Two others, Aminu Tambuwal and Mohammed Hayatu-Deen, had withdrawn from the race before the voting started. It later emerged that their withdrawal was in deference to power brokers in the party out to stop Mr Wike at all costs.
The power brokers, reportedly represented on the ground in Abuja by a retired army general and former National Security Adviser, Aliyu Mohammed, and former Sokoto State governor, Attahiru Bafarawa, were alarmed by the prospects of Mr Wike picking the ticket.
Aside from considering the governor as “un-presidential” in carriage and conduct, they also feared that he would be easily beaten at the general election by the All Progressives Congress (APC), despite the much-reported confusion going on in the ruling party over an alleged plot to conscript former President Goodluck Jonathan, a PDP member, as its own candidate.
Power brokers
The power brokers are mostly former military generals from the northern part of Nigeria but have among them a former president from the south. They had long tried to produce a sole candidate from the region as the focal point of support for northern delegates and their southern allies.
According to sources close to some of the northern aspirants, the power brokers, or elders as they are called in the circle, had initially ruled out Mr Tambuwal because his home North-west zone has produced two presidents in this dispensation, including the incumbent Muhammadu Buhari.
They also did not favour Mr Abubakar “because he has had his chances,” the former vice president had received the backing of the group at the PDP primaries in 2011 and 2019.
They had then settled on Messrs Saraki and Mohammed, whose two zones (North Central and North East respectively) have never produced an elected president, with the understanding that it would be easier to persuade one of them to stand down for the other.
However, they soon discovered that neither of those two was equipped in terms of political and financial capital to withstand a Tsunami that had appeared on the scene in the form of the Rivers State governor.
Although Messrs Saraki and Mohammed could not agree between themselves on “the northern consensus candidate,” they also both refused to step down for Mr Abubakar after the power brokers finally settled on him as their candidate again.
Mr Tambuwal too, who was not an ally of Mr Abubakar, was also not disposed to stepping down until he caved in under massive pressure from political, traditional and religious leaders from across the region.
After committing himself to withdraw from the race, he also agreed to strategically delay the announcement until just before voting started, when it was too late for Mr Wike to deploy an effective countermeasure.
The Rivers State governor had been keenly following developments and had reached out to some of the aspirants to urge them not to withdraw, having also identified Mr Abubakar as his main rival.
As things turned out, Messrs Saraki and Mohammed stayed on in the race but Mr Abubakar more than made up for the 90 votes lost to them by the votes he attracted from his southern allies and those persuaded by a former president.
Southern disunity
While the North was concentrating its forces, the South remained divided. Although Mr Wike got support from states like Cross Rivers, Abia, Oyo and Ekiti, most delegates from southern states like Enugu, Delta and Osun are believed to have gone for Mr Abubakar.
But the last moment withdrawal of Mr Tambuwal was said to have shocked him as much as being abandoned by some of his southern neighbours.
Mr Wike supported Mr Tambuwal’s ambition when he hosted the 2019 presidential primary of the party and had also pleaded with the Sokoto governor to at least stay on the ballot.
The governor had been a heavy financier of the party across the country and through thick and thin. Now, he has been taught some lessons on national politics.
Atiku 2023 campaign
With his job done at the convention, Mr Abubakar now has to take time off to plan his campaign for the 2023 election.
In his acceptance speech after his nomination had been certified, the candidate said: “Today, the battle to rebuild and unite our great country moves forward. I’m honoured to be named the PDP candidate. I look forward to speaking with Nigerians across the country, taking the message of hope and unity as we build one future for one people.”
Mr Abubakar has been running for president since 1992, but 2023 will be the third time he will be appearing on the ballot paper, aside from 1999 and 2003 when he was the running mate of Olusegun Obasanjo.
Many in the PDP genuinely see Mr Abubakar as the best the opposition party can present against the ruling APC. The kernel of the argument that persuaded the PDP to jettison its zoning policy and throw its presidential primary open is that the party should field the best candidate it can find.
Some party members and sympathisers also believe that Mr Abubakar was cheated by President Buhari in the 2019 election, although his petition was given short shrift by the tribunal and especially the Supreme Court.
With the incumbent no longer in the race, Mr Abubakar will be confident of doing better in the North than he did the last time. And if he maintains the same level of support he got in the south, the perennial presidential hopeful may finally help his party recover its favourite object: power.
APC sleepwalking into crisis
The APC was to begin its own National Convention to elect its presidential candidate for the 2023 election on Monday, which would have been hours after the opposition PDP rounded off its own.
But on Friday, the ruling party postponed the event, after the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) extended by six days the deadline for the submission of the lists of candidates for the 2020 General Election. The party said the convention will now hold between June 6 and 8.
Many Nigerians have accused the APC of forcing INEC to flip flop and grant the extension, as the commission had vowed not to change its timetable, following previous requests by some parties for an extension.
Speaking with the Punch, a human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, captured the anger that trailed the development.
“What has happened is a case of the witch cried yesterday and the child died today. The APC had postponed its screening of candidates. Barely 24 hours later, INEC postponed the deadline for primaries.
“INEC will have to convince the public of its readiness to operate without interference from anybody. INEC must not let the ruling party, lawyers or the courts subvert the democratic process,” he warned.
Other observers largely agreed that APC forced INEC to make the change as part of plots by some forces in the party to impose former President Goodluck Jonathan as the consensus candidate of the party.
The audacious plot disregards the fact that 28 aspirants paid N100 million each to contest the party’s presidential primary, including Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, the party’s national leader, Bola Tinubu, Senate President Ahmad Lawan, and many governors and former ministers. The former ministers had resigned to take part in the primary.
It is unclear how the party expects to draft Mr Jonathan into the race at this late hour without causing an implosion in the party.
Mr Jonathan is still a member of the PDP, as the opposition party acknowledged in the brochure for its National Convention on Saturday. He has also not declared for the APC – about two weeks ago he dissociated from a group that bought an APC nomination form in his name.
That group was reportedly sponsored by a northern governor said to be one of three governors positioning for nomination as Mr Jonathan’s running mate if their plot succeeds.
Meanwhile, President Buhari, who was said to have met Mr Jonathan in the plot, has refused to say anything about the confusion. Instead, he jetted out last week to Malabo in Equatorial Guinea while his party was preparing for the convention to nominate his successor.
Speaking in an interview with Punch newspaper on Sunday, a former senator and campaigner for Mr Osinbajo, Sola Adeyeye, expressed incredulity on the development.
“Honestly, I think it’s not possible. I think some people are basically playing a game with the psyche of Nigerians. I think these are evil people. I don’t see how Jonathan will become the presidential candidate of the APC, not even after the man himself has repeatedly debunked the idea. But if by any act of commission or omission some rascals work that out, I can predict that the APC will collapse if Jonathan becomes its candidate. When did he become a member of the party? In any case, in what other civil nation do they see this kind of nonsense being peddled? I don’t think it will happen. I think some people are basically just playing with that,” Mr Adeyeye said.
Cracks in NWC
The mischief is believed to have contributed to a crack in the party’s National Working Committee which appeared on Saturday.
A National Vice Chairman, Salihu Lukman, in a letter dated May 27, 2022, and addressed to Mr Adamu, said the National Chairman was frustrating the screening of the presidential aspirants.
“Presidential aspirants are yet to be screened. The official explanation is that you are awaiting final consultation with President Buhari. At the risk of sounding agitated, this is unfair to the president because to the best of my understanding, it is an attempt to use his name to give excuses for failure.”
Mr Lukman copied President Buhari, Vice President Osinbajo, Senate President Lawan; Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, first interim chairman of the APC, Bisi Akande, Mr Tinubu, former national chairman Adams Oshiomole, Ogbonnaya Onu and all the NWC members.
APC has again rescheduled the screening of the presidential aspirants for Monday and Tuesday, even though no one knows for sure how many they are.
Did leaders of the party take notice of the successful primary of its main rival? That may be seen in how the secretive APC goes into its own from this week.
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