President Muhammadu Buhari’s reelection has suffered massive set back as a powerful influential governor from the South West has perfected plans to dump the ruling All Progressive Congress, APC.
The governor is said to be at logger heads with the party leadership over injustcice meted to him and his loyalist in the recently concluded state primaries.
But media reports have indicated how president Buhari has gone to great length to prevent the powerful governor from dumping the APC.
All efforts to get the governor to have a change of heart were rebuffed until Buhari personally dangled Governor Ibikunle Amosun with three senatorial slots and the right to bring in one member for the House of Representatives.
Subsequently, Amosun’s name and two other loyalist have been submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission as the party’s senatorial candidates in the 2019 election.
The state chapter of the party had been enmeshed in internal crisis following the governorship primary that produced Mr. Dapo Abiodun as the candidate of the party, against the preferred choice of the governor, Adekunle Akinlade, who had been chosen as the party’s consensus candidate before the primary.
But, after the primary, conducted by the electoral committee from the National Working Committee, in which his candidate lost, the governor had protested against the outcome of the election as he lashed out at the National Leader of the party, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, and a former governor of the state, Chief Segun Osoba, for maintaining “deafening silence” on the matter.
The governor had also visited President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo about four times in three weeks over the crisis.
He had also dismissed rumours that he was planning to leave the party, while insisting that he would hand over to Akinlade as against the winner of the primary.
But in a bid to end the crisis, the party gave the governor the senatorial slots and the Rep position.
Already, the names on the provisional list of the National Assembly candidates for Ogun State released by the Independent National Electoral Commission on Thursday showed that Amosun got the ticket for the Ogun Central seat, thus displacing the incumbent, Dr. Lanre Tejuoso, who had expressed his intention to go for a second term. And for the two other senatorial seats in Ogun East and Ogun West, the names of Senator Lekan Mustapha and Chief Tolu Odebiyi were on the list respectively.
Meanwhile, former President Olusegun Obasanjo was said to have visited Amosun on Friday morning in his office at Oke Mosan, Abeokuta.
Sources told our correspondent that the former President arrived the office some few minutes before 10am to convince the governor to dump Buhari and join the moving train.
As it stands, Amosun is at Crossroads as to who to support in 2019. Although the governor is very close to Buhari, sources say, he has tremendous respect for Obasanjo and will never go against his wish.
Recall, that in 2007, Amosun stepped down for Obasanjo’s daughter, Iyabo to replace him at the National Assembly.
Obasanjo is supporting his former VP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, who needs massive votes from the South West to defeat the incumbent in the
