Tinubu’s Planned Presidential Declaration And GEJ’s Chances In 2015

The LEADERSHIP Newspaper on Sunday reports that all is now set for the national leader of the All Progressives Congress(APC) and former governor of Lagos State, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu to declare his presidential ambition. While the paper reportedly said that Tinubu’s plan to declare for president may be a bargaining chip for the APC leader to determine who eventually may emerge as the presidential candidate of the party which may have already been zoned to the north, it is obvious that Tinubu may not be a happy man, lately.

However what all these means is that all is not well with the APC especially as the party has grown beyond the firm grips of either Tinubu or former head of state, General Muhammadu Buhari, because the governors of APC have finally taken over the party. The “new” APC is different from the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria, where Tinubu determines who gets what from councillors to governorship positions. He was singlehandedly responsible for nominating the present governors of Oyo, Lagos, Ogun and Osun states. And when the mandates of some of these governors was stolen by the PDP he brought the financial resources to take the battle all the way to the Supreme Court where they eventually regain their mandates. In the case of the leader of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change(CPC), General Muhammadu Buhari, he had a firm grip of the party that even when the party selects any candidate he did not like he upturns the verdict of the party faithful. A case in point was the victory of Mohammed Abacha who emerged the preferred gubernatorial candidate of CPC in 2011 in Kano State, but Buhari later gave the mandate to Jaafaru Isah who was eventually defeated by Kwankwaso despite the popularity of Buhari in the north. According to political pundits if Buhari had allowed Abacha to be the party’s candidate CPC would have won the governorship position of Kano State due to the popularity of Abacha in the state. The same scenario also played out in Buhari’s home state Katsina where some candidates who were alleged to have won the ticket to National Assembly but were eventually changed at the last minute and they headed to court and are still in court to this day.

With the APC seemly having to grapple with the challenges of picking its presidential candidate and which could be its greatest undoing if it does not get it right, what does this portend to the chances of the yet to be announced re-election bid of President Goodluck Jonathan? While all those who would have caused problems for Jonathan in PDP having left the party and apparently transferred their “wahala” to their new party, the PDP would move to the 2015 presidential election a more united party, but the APC if they fail to select their presidential candidate to the satisfaction of its leaders, the party may enter the 2015 race a fractured party and make victory easy for Jonathan despite all his leadership failings in the past three years or so.