Presidential Election: Jonathan, Buhari Put Finishing Touch To Epic Outing

Guardian

27 March 2011

 Presidential Election: Jonathan, Buhari Put Finishing Touch To Epic Outing

THERE now appears a quiet confidence among followers of Muhammadu Buhari’s Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), that Buhari could create a major upset in the April polls, going by the failure of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to put its house in order.

The Guardian political survey revealed that the Adamu Ciroma committee’s pro-North political campaigns might have inadvertently favoured the Buhari campaign that was not part of the original agenda. The objective of the Ciroma group was to get either former military president General Ibrahim Babangida or former Vice President Atiku Abubakar to be president. But when the committee’s choice, Atiku, did not make it at the PDP convention in February, the committee has quietly committed itself to sustaining the letter and spirit of the campaign: getting an aspirant of northern extraction elected in April. The Jonathan campaign is yet to break through the rock-solid Ciroma group, owing to the campaign’s reluctance to commit itself to any written agreement on transfer of power back to the North in 2015.

At the last meeting of the Jonathan and Ciroma groups on March 18, the second after the historic meeting at Ciroma’s Abuja residence earlier on, President Jonathan’s camp was apparently not prepared for concrete commitments. The committee headed by former Senate President, Pius Anyim Pius was said not to have updated the President on developments in reconciliation talks, and the meeting was reported to have deadlocked.

Meanwhile, the strategists in the North are eagerly waiting to take advantage of the failure by the PDP to reconcile, a situation that has opened Northern kingmakers to begin to consider other options, including Buhari. A member of the Atiku Organisation assured, however, that one week is enough for the PDP to make concessions and enter the elections with one undivided house.