It may be four months ago that President Muhammadu Buhari was sworn-in for his second and final term as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, but it won’t be out of place to state that the race and permutations on who succeeds him has started in earnest.
Nigerians on Monday woke up to the news of President Muhammadu Buhari replacing the Economic Management Team with an Economic Advisory Council which will henceforth report directly to the president. This means the EMT, chaired by Osinbajo had been dissolved.
As if that was not enough, the President also announced the dissolution of the Special Presidential Investigation Panel for the Recovery of Public Property (SPIP) established by Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo in August 2017.
Many questions have been asked as to why the sudden ‘demotion’ of the Vice President. It is important to state that judging from the experiences of the past, vesting too much power on the Vice President could haunt the President and his henchmen ahead of the 2019 Presidential election.
In 2006, when former President’s Olusegun Obasanjo’s 3rd term agenda was vehemently opposed by Atiku Abubaker. OBJ, as the former President was fondly called, pulled all the stops, bruising noses, breaking limbs, threatening men of means and substance to ensure that the then Governor of Katsina State, Umaru Musa Yar’adua emerged as the Presidential Candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
The Presidential ambition caused the beginning of the distrust between both men and it at some point led to a botched impeachment attempt on Obasanjo.
Many believe that Buhari’s earlier position on not having a preferred successor may have been said to calm fray nerves but the underlining intent to remove many obstacles on the path of those who may hinder the 2023 agenda of Buhari’s men are discretely being implemented.
What will this portend for the APC?
Four parties – Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) – dissolved into what became APC having come into the ‘’painful realisation” that none of them could defeat the PDP as separate entities ahead of the 2015 elections.
With Buhari expected to complete his 2nd and final term in 2023, most party fateful would expect that power will shift to the South, but will the North honour the ‘unwritten’ agreement? This is the question on the lips of many political observers and party loyalists.
In April, Babachir Lawal, a former secretary to the Nigerian government, had asked Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo not to expect preferential treatment on the question of who will succeed President Muhammadu Buhari in 2023.
Lawal, a long-time associate of Buhari had insisted that the APC did not promise Osinbajo its ticket for 2023.
“It is not in the constitution, so it is not a principle,” Lawal said while rejecting the zoning formula in an interview with The Sun.
“Principle of what? It is not in APC constitution, it is not in the national constitution, it is not in the Bible, I don’t know whether it is in the Koran; I don’t know. So, I don’t see how it became a principle.”
Lawal said he was not opposed to southerners vying for the office, but neither should any interested northerner be disqualified as a consequence.
Bola Tinubu, the ‘Lagos Landlord’ as he’s often called was said to have supported the re-election bid of President Muhammadu Buhari in the just concluded 2019 election with the hope that he would, in turn, support him 2023.
In July 2019, two billboards with the inscription ‘BAT 2023’ and a popular photograph of Bola Tinubu was mounted on a building a few meters away from the Lagos State Government House.
But with his protégé in the person of Osinbajo being ‘hounded’, how well can his dream be realised if he eventually throws his head in the ring?
It is evident that the drum of war is being beaten ahead of 2023, can the choice of the party’s Presidential flag bearer make or mar the party? What does the future hold for APC? All these questions will be answered when the APC’s political juggernauts finally unveil the scripts off their sleeves. We can only wait for it.