Tinubu to Float New Party as APC Experiences Crisis

The Future looks bleak for the All Progressives Congress (APC) as indications emerged that the ruling party is beginning to develop cracks among its leaders.

The National Daily gathered that certain APC leaders are under pressure to float a new political party over lingering disaffections on emerging decisions and actions in the control of the Federal Government under the party’s hegemony.

A gale of wranglings over many issues may eventually be responsible for the breakup. For starters, the way and manner President Muhammadu Buhari went about appointing people into his cabinet does not seem to have gone down well with the party stalwarts. Currently, the north has taken over 80% of the appointments Buhari has made so far. And his ministerial nominees, are also perceived essentially as by-product of his one-upmanship.

“To a large extent, the governors were not consulted on those picked from our states,” quipped an Aso Rock source last week. “But the leaders have to bear with the president because it is his constitutional prerogative.”

That Buhari “jobbed” certain southern politicians who were in the trenches when the APC was in the thick of the opposition war is another sore point. Of course, names which were neither members nor sympathisers of the APC suddenly cropped on the list of 37 ministerial nominees sent to the Senate among who 18 have been confirmed. And Bola Tinubu, APC’s national leader, is said to be somewhat upset about that as his nominees were flagrantly disregarded by President Buhari.

Again, the flank of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) which comprised to form the APC feels sidelined in nominating members of the Federal cabinet, leading to discontent between the likes of Tinubu, and the party’s guardian angel, ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo. Obasanjo had ostensibly been openly hobnobbing with Buhari to entrench his personal influence and thereafter run down Tinubu in the new government structure.

 

National Daily learnt that Tinubu, as an example of trying to peddle influence reportedly tapped Wale Edun, his former finance commissioner in Lagos, for the Federal Ministry of finance but was blocked by Obasanjo. Though Edun hails from Ogun, but has lived main Lagos, he was considered not fit to be a nominee of the state, hence his nomination was blocked by Obasanjo who was said to have additionally insisted that the former Lagos governor wouldn’t fill the Ogun federal slot for them. And Tinubu’s candidate was dropped for Kemi Adeosun.

Clearly, the APC financier’s hold on Buhari’s appointment is no longer as vice-like as expected in and outside Lagos, especially, in filling the southwestern slots in the federal cabinet. In Lagos, Tinubu’s estranged godson ex-Gov. Babatunde Fashola also slipped off his godfather’s grip. There were speculations that the APC national leader was against Fashola, and therefore doing everything to throw dirt on him in the run-up to the cabinet selection.

 

The idea was to rubbish his credentials before Buhari obsessed with corruption rating as a ground rule in selecting his ministers. But in spite of all the mudslinging, Fashola still made the cut; likewise the former Governor of Ekiti State, Dr. Kayode Fayemi. He too was said to have struck out of the Lagos crowd kowtowing to Tinubu, and was almost kissing his political career a goodbye with that decision.

Tinubu might have lost the reins in Osun, too. Olagunsoye Oyinlola, a former governor and protégé of Obasanjo, has been nominated. The former president has expanded his reach that far. Obasanjo now seems to be having the upper hand over Tinubu. And that is already generating a lot of furore in the party.