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By Olakunle Olafioye
LAST week’s emergence of the national leader of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as the presidential flagbearer of the party is seen by many as the best bet for the ruling party even when the choice appears to have also come with a mountainous challenge.
This is the view of one of the chieftains of the ruling party, Jackson-Lekan Ojo. The Port Harcourt based APC stalwart maintained that powerbrokers within the ruling party, though they failed in their bid to thwart Tinubu’s ambition in flying the party’s ticket at next year’s presidential election, but that they succeeded in depleting the support base of the former governor of Lagos State within the party.
And this, he believes, may prove costly for the ruling party at the February 25, 2023 presidential contest.
Lekan Ojo also speaks more on the chances of the three leading candidates in the contest and other issues that are likely to define the outcome of the 2023 presidential contest in this interview.
After weeks of suspense and intrigues the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, finally elected Bola Tinubu as its 2023 presidential flagbearer. What does this suggest with Atiku flying the Peoples Democratic Party’s ticket at the election?
There is nobody in APC that could have emerged as a match for Atiku apart from Tinubu. Tinubu is the only candidate that has what it takes to match the PDP candidate strength for strength as far as the 2023 presidential election is concerned. I think APC got it right with the emergence of Asiwaju. Had any other aspirant emerged ahead of Tinubu as APC candidate, the presidential contest could have been a walk-over for Atiku and PDP.
The build up to the APC primary was filled with drama and intrigues, the height of which was the announcement of the Senate President, Ahmad Lawal, as the party’s consensus candidate by
the national chairman of the ruling party, while the APC governors from the North rooted for a southerner. As it stands, do you see the party maintaining the needed cohesion to retain the number one seat?
Before the primary it was obvious that there was no unity within the party and with the body language of some stake- holders especially with what we saw at Eagle Square during the primary, it was obvious that APC was not going into the contest as a united force. I think it is only Bola Tinubu and his loyalists and few other sympathizers, and probably the by-standers, I mean those who do not belong to any group, these are the people I think are likely to stand by Tinubu to face Atiku Abubakar and PDP at next year’s presidential election. During the primary when aspirants began to announce their withdrawal from the race and their support for Tinubu, the face and the body language of some key party men showed that they were not comfortable with the way the contest turned out. I can boldly tell you that Bola Tinubu is not the candidate of power brokers in APC. The majority of them are disgruntled and they will want that their opposition to the emergence of Tinubu
will make the APC presidential flagbearer to come for their heads later. So because of this, APC and Tinubu are not going to face Atiku and PDP with a united a force. It will be very dangerous for APC and Tinubu to face the PDP and Atiku in such manner.
Considering Tinubu’s pedigree and political sagacity, don’t you foresee the possibility of bringing various groups within the party together before the election?
You can only bring back your enemies who have their reasons for opposing you back to your side if you are able to address their grouse against you. But as for those ones that are so mean and have no cogent reasons for their hatred for you, bringing them back to your side may prove very difficult if not impossible. There are those that will still not support you even if you pluck out your eye and give it to them. There is nothing Tinubu will do that will make Mr. President, Buhari, to support him. There is no way, Osinbajo, who belongs to Bola Tinubu’s school, politically, will support Tinubu. People believed that little persuasion would have made Osinbajo to step down for Tinubu but Osinbanjo was not just standing on his own, Osinbajo was standing and refused to step down for Tinubu on the instruction of some powerful persons. And there is no way this category of people will ever be satisfied no matter what Tinubu does for them. Their intention is to take their own pound of flesh and crush him politically. Let me tell you this: but for the advice of some sound political strategists and tacticians, Tinubu would have been disqualified from contesting the primary. It was because they could not succeed to disqualify him that was why they attempted to play the consensus card with Ahmad Lawal. Ahmad Lawal was one of the political loyalists of Tinubu. Lawal once boasted that Tinubu was his leader and he was going to support him, but suddenly the language changed because some persons were bent to frustrate Tinubu out of the race. The battle is not entirely between APC and PDP, it is a battle between Tinubu and some fraction of APC because there is a lot of trouble from the home front.
Don’t you think Tinubu can address this challenge if he is able to get a popular and widely acceptable running mate?
That is another problem. Bola Tinubu is a southerner Muslim from the Southwest and getting a popular and sellable Christian from the North will be another challenge. Because if we take the battle to either
the Northwest or the Northeast, who are predominantly Muslims, how is he going to get a popular Christian running mate? This battle is a contest between Tinubu and Atiku on one hand; it is also a contest between Tinubu and the Muslims in the North on another hand; and a contest between Bola Tinubu and the Hausa-Fulani in the northern Nigeria on yet another hand. In the northern Nigeria, ethnicity has a huge role to play; religion also has a serious role to play. Until Tinubu is able to get a political heavyweight Christian in the northern Nigeria to pair with him, it is not going to be easy.
APC, PDP and Labour Party with Peter Obi are parties with three popular candidates from the three major ethnic groups in Nigeria. Are we looking at a contest in which ethnicity will likely play a major role in who emerges as Nigeria’s next President?
There is no contest and there won’t be any contest between Tinubu and Obi. Similarly, there won’t be any contest between Atiku and Obi. It would have been better if Obi had supported Atiku Abubakar. There is no doubt, Obi is a good presidential material, but he has no electoral value. Obi has no political clout to win presidential election in Nigeria. Obi will face a major challenge from the Southeast and his major problem will come from his home-state, Anambra. Recently, the national chairman of APGA came out in a video condemning Obi over his exit from APGA after he had sworn and vowed publicly not to leave the party. But eventually he decamped to PDP. Since leaving APGA, Obi has not been able to win a ward, a Councillor or a local government seat. True to that claim, when he was a running mate to Atiku, Obi was unable to deliver his local government. That confirms that he is a popular name, but political feather weight. As at today in Nigeria, there is no other political party, apart from PDP and APC, that has what it takes to dislodge these two major political parties as far as presidential election is concerned in Nigeria.
