APC Presidential Candidate: Buhari wants race down to only two aspirants

President Muhammadu Buhari has requested that the list of aspirants to the ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the 2023 presidential election be further pruned to two.

RELIABLESOURCENG.COM gathered that the list of five aspirants already agreed to by the Progressives Governors Forum, a group of APC governors from the north, and the party’s National Working Committee (NWC), has already been reduced to three.

But a source who spoke to us, on the condition of anonymity, said the President wants the list down to a two-horse race between the South West and South East.

The list of five aspirants has three from South West, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Governor Kayode Fayemi and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo; one from South East, Governor David Umahi and one from South-South, former Minister of Transportation, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi.

According to our source, because of the instruction from Aso Rock, the governors and the NWC are now at crossroads as who between Umahi and Amaechi will be taken, if the choice has to be made in line with zonal arrangement, since Nigeria operates six zonal political structure – North East, North West, North Central, South East, South West and South-South.

READ: APC northern governors, NWC shortlist five southern presidential aspirants

“But from the unfolding scenario, it is apparent the president may be looking at the nation sitting on a tripod, that is, North on top and East and West down south. In this case, either of Umahi or Amaechi will emerge from the East.

“Both aspirants are of Igbo extraction and the President might have satisfied his conscience that he has been fair to every part of the South, especially the Igbo of South East which has yet to produce a Nigerian president out of the six geo-political zones,” our source explained.

“So, if the consensus committee, as it were, is able to further prune the list of aspirants to two, then it will become one aspirant, out of Fayemi, Osinbajo and Tinubu from the West against either of Umahi or Amaechi from the East,” the source added.