By OUR REPORTER
As race for the National Chairmanship of All Progressives Congress (APC) thickens, posters of immediate past Governor of Nasarawa State and sitting Senator in the National Assembly, Arc. Umar Tanko Al-Makura, have flooded parts of Ibadan, the Oyo State capital.
*APC state secretariat, Oke Ado, Ibadan, Oyo State also has Al-Makura’s presidential posters pasted on its frontage wall.
The DEFENDER gathered that the posters, as at the time of filing this report, were sighted in Molete and on the walls of the APC state secretariat in Oke-Ado in the Africa’s biggest city.
Efforts to get Senator Al-Makura, who was never thought of in the permutations until the posters emerged, proved abortive yet, but an observer of party politics in Ibadan told our reporter that, “Anything can happen.”
All things being equal, the APC Presidential ticket is expected to be zoned to the South and South West appears to be the most favoured among the three geopolitical zones of the part, according Secretary General, South West Agenda for Asiwaju 2023 (SWAGA’23), Hon. Bosun Oladele, in an exclusive interview he granted to and which was published in The DEFENDER, recently.
Although unsure of what side the zoning will go as the governing party is yet to decide, the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) recently took bold decisions that threw its presidential ticket open to all parts of the country as ‘anybody from any region can contest”.
As such, the party’s position of National Chairman has decisively gone to the North Central to a former Senate President known to wield strong influence, Senator Iyorchia Ayu.
Findings revealed that Ayu’s choice as PDP chairman, considering his role in favour of South West’s MKO Abiola, during the June 12, 1993 presidential election saga in the country, may have begun to set some gladiators within the APC on sleepless night hence the consideration for Al-Makura coming from his zone to weaken the grip of opposition therein.
It will be recalled that the position of Deputy National Chairman South of the PDP that went to a South West politician of the Lamidi Adedibu political dynasty, Rafiu Arapaja, in the same Ibadan, is as well strategic.
With the opposition’s arrangement, already seen as master stroke as some stakeholders jitter, that emergence of a charismatic presidential candidate like Rt. Hon. Aminu Waziri Tambuwal from the North West will be a nail on coffin for APC in the coming transitional process, political mathematicians of the governing party, in their wisdom, may be considering the Al-Makura joker for the APC National Chairman from the North Central state imof Nasarawa, a neighbouring state of Benue, from where the PDP’s national chairman comes, to whittle down the influence PDP might wield in the zone while they thinker with others.
Asked if the fear of PDP is now the beginning of wisdom for APC, the Ibadan source simply replied, “Only time will tell. But the reason Al-Makura’s posters begin to emerge especially from the South West’s Ibadan city cannot be far from calculation of some political mathematicians of the APC,” he said.
