The present unrest in the All Progressives Congress (APC), has been described as an outright battle for the 2019 presidency.
A report credited to Global Village Extra, quoted civil rights lawyer, Mike Ozekhome (SAN) to have revealed that the infighting in the ruling APC was a battle for the control of the soul of the party ahead of the 2019 elections, hence the friction among the party stalwarts.
Ozekhome noted that the battle is between the camp of former vice president, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and the national leader of the APC, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.
The emergence of Senator Bukola Saraki and Yakubu Dogara as the senate president and house of representatives speaker respectively, against the wish of the party, has exposed the discord in the ruling party.
This has led many observers and analysts to request the sanction of Saraki and Dogara, just as the leadership of the APC described the election of the NASS leadership as gross indiscipline with a promise to sanction the new principal officers for not following the party’s directive on the election of principal officers of the National Assembly.
According to Ozekhome, the disarray in the different camps is centered around the fact that president Muhammadu Buhari may be too old to run for office by 2019, and with power likely to remain in the north, the different groups are trying to firm up their grip and affluence in the party.
“What we are seeing is the battle for 2019. It is a straight fight between the Atiku camp and Bola Tinubu’s camp. The thinking is that Buhari will be too old to run for office by then so the camps want to consolidate their grip on power before then,” the lawyer said, warning that failure to address the issue amicably would damage the survival and success of the party.
Recall that Atiku was recently sighted with some Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governors, having a nice time with people who were supposed to be in he opposition.
So Atuku don’t want to rest?