2015: North insists on Buhari •Says attempt to stop him a Southern agenda

SOME Political power brokers in the Northern geo-political zones who held a series of meetings in the last one week were said to have concluded that former Head of State, General Muhammadu Buhari remains the best presidential material for the merger party, the All Progressives Congress (APC).
The Northern political leaders who cut across the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) and the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) were said to have commenced series of strategic meetings to x-ray developments in the aftermath of the registration of the APC.
It was revealed that the Northern leaders met to analyze the situation in the APC in recent times and came to a conclusion that the coalition could only float with Buhari as candidate.
Sources confirmed to the Nigerian Tribune that Buhari, 70, who had contested presidential election in 2003, 2007 and 2011, is already being tagged by some elements of the APC as unsellable for the 2015 election.
Some leaders of the party were said to have told Buhari to jettison his presidential aspiration, while allowing for the emergence of a younger Northerner to emerge.
Sources said recently that leader of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria(ACN), Senator Bola Tinubu had bought into the plan and had asked Buhari to drop his presidential ambition.
Tinubu was said to have told Buhari that the two of them should lead the charge for the emergence of a younger candidate.
Although Buhari was said to be non-committal to the plot to remove him from the 2015 race, it was gathered that the APC was already being organized in a way that would make it difficult for Buhari’s emergence.
Sources said that some leaders of the APC were already determined to stop Buhari and that if he rejects the plea not to contest the primaries, they will engineer his defeat.
“The agenda is going to be driven by the governors who will control the delegates and instruct them on what to do. We have asked Buhari to stay off the primaries,” a source in the party said.
But sources close to the Northern political establishment confirmed on Sunday that they have discovered that the plot to stop Buhari is a Southern agenda to deny the North the 2015 presidency.
According to the analysis said to have been put together at the end of last week, the North believes that Senator Tinubu and some Southern leaders of the APC like Governor Rochas Okorocha are eyeing the presidency in 2019 and that the plot to drop Buhari in 2015 will only lead to the emergence of a weak Northern candidate that could be easily defeated by President Goodluck Jonathan of the Peoples Democratic Party.(PDP).
The source said that the plot is aimed at returning power to the South in 2019 after Jonathan must have completed his second term.
“There is a grand suspicion that Senator Tinubu has not dumped his presidential ambition and that he and people like Okorocha are eyeing 2019. If Buhari is dumped in 2015 that would only pave the way for an easy win by the PDP and by 2019 they will insist that APC should zone presidency to the South.
“This is a plot we have to fight against to protect the  desire of our supporters in the North,” a source in the party said.
TRIBUNE