2019 Presidency: South West leaders reportedly rule out automatic ticket for Buhari

“There is no sense in such announcement by the same race that President Buhari had so much entrusted the critical portfolios of his administration to since 2015 and had given them strong enabling that lead to the doing well they are now acknowledging from their governors getting out of inability to pay salaries to their ministers making a lot of positive changes in the critical areas they occupy.  If any race must make such announcement, it should not come from Yoruba Land.  But the way it has been, it appears, the Yoruba have more to them for anybody to be bothered than the worry over the Igbo,” the respondent said.

The DEFENDER can authoritatively report that leaders of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the South West, including governors, National Assembly members, ministers and others, met Thursday evening in Ibadan, Oyo State capital, where they decided that there will be no automatic ticket for President Muhammadu Buhari for the 2019 presidential elections.

The leaders reportedly rose from an “exclusive stakeholders” meeting in Agodi Government House, Ibadan, and declared that the presidential ticket of the party was open to all as the march towards 2019 general elections gets underway.

In attendance were the host governor, Abiola Ajimobi, Akinwunmi Ambode (Lagos), Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola (Osun), Ibikunle Amosun (Ogun), Rotimi Akeredolu (Ondo), a former National Chairman of the party, Chief Bisi Akande, former governors Adebayo Alao-Akala (Oyo), Olagunsoye Oyinlola (Osun), Olusegun Osoba (Ogun), Adeniyi Adebayo (Ekiti), Kayode Fayemi (Ekiti), who is serving as Minister for Solid Minerals, Communications Minister, Barrister Abdur-Raheem Adebayo Shittu, a Minister of State for Niger Delta, Claudius Daramola, Senator Adeyeye, Deputy Speaker House of Representatives, Lasun Yusuf and the Majority Leader, Femi Gbajabiamila among others.

When The DEFENDER called on the Minister of Communications, Shittu, who was said to be at the meeting, to get clarification of his own attitude to the zonal leaders’ pronouncement, his phone was switched off.

The Chief Press Secretary to the Ondo State Governor, Mr. Segun Ajiboye, who his call however did not speak on the side of Governor Rotimi Akeredolu, who, like Shittu, is another politician and senior public officer of South West loyal to President Buhari.

Ajiboye however directed that all that was needed from his principal by The DEFENDER had been published in the print media.

The party’s National Leader, Senator Bola Tinubu, who was billed to attend the meeting reportedly shelved the decision at the last minute “because of stomach ache,” according to Chief Akande, the group’s Spokesman.

But Mr Tunde Rahman, Tinubu’s Special Adviser on Media, later held a media parley with journalists and allayed fears over the health of his boss, stressing that, “he (Tinubu) considered it wise to stay back in Lagos to attend to the ache and he is part and parcel of decisions going on at the meeting.”

President Muhammadu Buhari got a large chunk of votes in 2015 from the South West and Thursday’s decision by leaders from the South West zone left many questions unanswered ahead of 2019.

Speaking on behalf of the APC stakeholders at the end of the meeting, Chief Akande said they were in Ibadan as a follow up to the January this year’s meeting they held in the same town, to appraise the state of affairs of the party and how the zone was fairing in the scheme of things.

“We are happy that our governors and ministers are performing satisfactorily. As a party, we are trying to review our position to see what we are going to do to have Ekiti back for APC in 2018,” he said.

Asked of the position of the party on President Buhari’s rumoured second term ambition, Akande said, “He has not told us he is running for 2019. Anybody in our party is free to become the president of Nigeria as long as he indicates interest.

“We have a process through which a candidate will be selected. If he is lucky to have the ticket, then we have no option than to present him as our candidate,” he said.

On the clamour for restructuring, Akande said, “Restructuring is not our language. Go and ask those who are advocating for restructuring to define it. What I told you just now is devolution of function from the centre to the state and to the local government,” he said.

A respondent however opined that for South West leaders, who admitted that their governors and ministers were performing well, a development he credited to the good leadership provided by President Muhammadu Buhari, “they may be heading for the rock like the South East did before which turned out to be their nightmare today and which they are now blaming the President for in stead of blaming themselves for their own woes.”

He said, “There is no sense in such announcement by the same race that President Buhari had so much entrusted the critical portfolios of his administration to since 2015 and had given them strong enabling that lead to the doing well they are now acknowledging from their governors getting out of inability to pay salaries to their ministers making a lot of positive changes in the critical areas they occupy.  If any race must make such announcement, it should not come from Yoruba Land.  But the way it has been, it appears, the Yoruba have more to them for anybody to be bothered than the worry over the Igbo,” he said.