Founder and pioneer national chairman of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), Senator Rufai Hanga, has said there was a kind of “agreement” that President Muhammadu Buhari would hand over power to the national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and former governor of Lagos State, Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu in 2023.
He however expressed doubt that Buhari would hand over to Tinubu.
He stated this in an interview with Daily Trust, adding that the agreement was the reason why Tinubu remained in the APC after Buhari’s first term.
He said, “This is an open secret. There was an implied agreement. Even in law, there is implied and expressed act. If something is expressed, there are no two ways about it. There was an implied agreement that he would take over. That is why he didn’t back out after the first tenure. If Tinubu knew that he would not benefit, he would have backed out during Buhari’s first tenure. But he knows there was an agreement,” he said.
Hanga however expressed doubt that the APC would give its ticket to Tinubu, predicting a fight ahead, with power blocs among governors and some forces in the Presidency.
The former lawmaker said though the two major parties had their crises, Nigerians may in the end prefer the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) because of what he described as a woeful performance of the APC government under Buhari.
But Daily Trust could not get reactions from the Presidency and the APC headquarters on Hanga’s allegations.
A presidential spokesperson, Garba Shehu, declined comment when contacted by our reporter.
Secretary of the APC Caretaker/Extraordinary National Convention Planning Committee, Senator James Akpanudoedehe, and the party’s Deputy National Publicity Secretary, Yekini Nabena, did not respond to phone calls made to them.
But in a telephone interview with Daily Trust, a chieftain of the party and former presidential candidate, Chief Chekwas Okorie, said the purported agreement should not be a basis for transfer of power, insisting that President Buhari lacks the power as an individual to appoint Tinubu a presidential candidate because it does not exist in the constitution of the APC.
He said Tinubu should lobby, just like any other aspirant in the party.
Okorie said, “If there was such agreement, it was gentlemanly. It does not exist in the APC constitution or any democratic norm. It does not exist in the Nigerian constitution.
“If there was such agreement, it wouldn’t have been when Buhari was sworn in as president. And it wouldn’t have been written.
“It was a gamble, as far as I am concerned. So I will say that if Asiwaju is relying on that agreement, he sold ‘the market’ on credit. That is the basic political description of what he did.
“Will President Buhari tell the party not to observe all the necessary processes that would lead to the election of a presidential candidate and simply foist Asiwaju on us? “That one will not be democratic, and it is not possible. It will be a sure way of leading the party to defeat in 2023. And I know that President Buhari would want to see the party continue after him.”