Former presidential candidate of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), Major General Muhammadu Buhari(rtd) may after all contest the presidential ticket of the newly-registered All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2015. It was revealed that in spite of the entreaties to the national leader of the CPC and one of the prime movers of the new party to drop his ambition for a younger politician with a considerable national appeal, his insistence on fighting for the party ticket has unsettled his loyalists. Recall that before the consummation of the merger deal by the opposition parties, the former military head of state had in a recent media chat said he could drop his ambition for a better candidate.
Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Aminu Tambuwal, is being touted as a more marketable candidate by the concerned Buhari faithful in the APC. “By our calculations, a younger and vibrant politician should run as our candidate so as to give the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) a good fight; but from the way things are, we are stocked in between telling Buhari out-rightly not to run and allowing him to continue with some ripple effects coming our way later,” a Daily Sun source revealed. But this is coming as the PDP yesterday accused the APC of lacking in a politician of pedigree among its rank for the 2015 presidency.The party was reacting to the Tuesday’s call by the acting National Chairman of APC, Chief Bisi Akande at its maiden press briefing on President Jonathan to abandon PDP for the new party.
Acting National Publicity Secretary of PDP, Caesar Okeke, declared that for asking President Goodluck Jonathan to join its fold, the APC has admitted that it has no presidential material in its fold. The PDP claimed “ the leadership crisis rocking the opposition party just a few days after registration is an indication that the APC is a party of desperate power mongers whose only aim was to satisfy their egocentric interests”. The ruling party further claimed that the APC has confirmed to Nigerians that” it does not believe in the leadership abilities of its prominent leaders, General Muhammadu Buhari and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu”. Also, the Senior Special Adviser, Public Affairs to the President, Dr Doyin Okupe, in a statement, noted that the widely reported invitation by the APC on President Jonathan to join its fold clearly justified its earlier stance that” the opposition political party lacks the human resource to provide good and effective governance for the Nigerian nation and will always have to depend on the Peoples Democratic Party for leadership in all ramifications”.
Okupe queried the rationale for the invitation to a sitting president to dump his party for an opposition platform.
“ While it is not out of place for political parties to make overtures to those they believe have the capacity to assist them gain greater acceptability among the electorate, it is noteworthy that this invitation is being extended to a sitting President who was elected on the platform of another political party and whose unquestionable performance in the last two years have often been derided by this same political cynics. “It is noteworthy that in extending its invitation to the President, the National Chairman of the APC made reference to what it called “crisis rocking the PDP”; forgetting that the real test of leadership is not in running away from crisis but in resolving them firmly and fairly. The very nature of democratic politics envisages conflict of ideas, interests and aspirations which must be aggregated for the overall good of the public and which all true leaders must be mentally and emotionally prepared to tackle,” Okupe said.
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