• 20,000 to vote at primary
As the contest for the ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC) ahead of the 2015 presidential election gathers momentum, the South-west zone has emerged the “beautiful bride” who the aspirants must court if they must secure the ticket of the party to contest the poll, THISDAY can authoritatively report.
It was gathered from party sources that the emergence of the South-west zone as the beautiful bride stems from two reasons, the first being the immense influence a National Leader of the APC and former Lagos State Governor, Senator Bola Tinubu, still has on the zone.
The second arises from the fact that the zone will not be producing the presidential candidate of the APC for the 2015 elections, but still commands the highest number of states controlled by the party and would therefore be expected to produce a substantial number of delegates who will determine the outcome of the presidential primary scheduled for December 2, 2014.
Accordingly, the major contenders for the presidential ticket of the party comprising former military Head of State, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari; former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar; and Kano State Governor, Rabiu Kwankwaso, have been lobbying the South-west governors ferociously to get their support.
A highly-placed party source informed THISDAY that it is important that the three major presidential contenders enlist the support of the five South-west governors, as they in turn would be expected to tow whatever line determined by Tinubu, their leader.
He said: “As things stand today in the party, the South-west remains up for grabs for all the presidential contenders as the governors await the directive of the ‘oracle’.”
The oracle refers to Tinubu, who is believed to have considerable influence on the South-west APC.
Although initial bets were on Tinubu throwing his weight behind the candidature of Buhari owing to the pre-merger deal they reached early this year on the Muslim-Muslim ticket, the party source informed THISDAY yesterday that even Buhari was yet to receive any form of material support from Tinubu, while none of the governors in the South-west have been given instructions to line up behind the retired General.
“Asiwaju is not talking about the presidential contest with anyone and so it is difficult to decipher his thinking on the issue. The party in the South-west is at a standstill because all the governors of the party are apprehensive about running into a collision with him on the matter,” the source said.
However, while the governors await Tinubu’s nod on the direction to head, THISDAY also gathered that APC might alter the guidelines for its primaries from the modified direct primaries to indirect primaries, as well as cut down the number of delegates who shall vote at the party’s presidential primary from an unwieldy 300,000 to between 15,000 and 20,000.
APC had on August 21, at a National Executive Committee meeting in Abuja, approved the modified direct primaries for the selection of its presidential candidate and other candidates seeking to contest elective offices during next year’s general election.
The party also proposed October as the date to commence the processes for the selection of its presidential candidate.
Under the modified direct primaries system, about 300,000 members would be required to vote to determine the party’s presidential candidate.
But no sooner had the voting pattern been adopted than it stirred controversy in the party, followed by angry reactions from the camps of some aspirants.
However, a party source explained that convening a primary with 300,000 delegates starting from the ward level would require biometric capture of all its delegates, which would be too costly to implement and time-consuming.
“Also, the Electoral Act stipulates that the presidential primary must be held in one venue. There is no venue that can accommodate 300,000 members except the primaries are held at the ward level and other levels, which is in contravention of the Act.
“So the plan is to change the guidelines by adopting the indirect primaries to chose the presidential candidate of the party, then to prune down the number of delegates drastically by selecting delegates from the local government level and statutory delegates.
“This way, we can limit the number of delegates to a manageable number that can vote at the presidential primary,” the source explained.
Source: Thisday
