Tinubu said to be considering his options if Oshiomhole is forced out as APC governors converge in Abuja

ALL Progressives Congress (APC) national leader Asiwaju Bola Tinubu is reported to be considering switching his support to Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate Alhaji Atiku Abubakar if party chairman Adams Oshiomhole is removed.

Over the last few weeks, the APC has been wracked with internal divisions as a result of its divisive gubernatorial and parliamentary primary elections. Across many states, there were complaints about some candidates being imposed on the party, especially by governors who ignored the results of the primaries and proceeded to forward the names of their preferred candidates to APC headquarters in Abuja.

In some states, the governors did not get their way as their candidates were not accepted by party delegates and Mr Oshiomhole has been blamed for not backing them. Unhappy with Mr Oshiomhole's refusal to back their candidates, several leading party members have called for his resignation, claiming the direct and indirect primary dichotomy was responsible for the unfavourable results.

APC governors are meeting in Abuja today and one of the issues they are said to plan to discuss is the removal of Mr Oshiomhole as party chairman. Unhappy with the development, Asiwaju Tinubu is said to be weighing his options as he may not be able to bear the humiliation should antagonists succeed in pushing out Mr Oshiomole.

Apparently, a meeting has been scheduled to hold between Asiwaju Tinubu and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar in Ghana over the issue. Asiwaju Tinubu started reconsidering his support for the Buhari presidency after the emergence of his bosom friend and political ally Atiku Abubarkar as the PDP presidential candidate.

Also, Asiwaju Tinubu was said to be jolted by  the popularity of the Atiku candidature especially across southwest Nigeria because of his restructuring agenda which APC had been reluctant to pursue. Asiwaju Tinubu is now said to be under pressure to throw his weight behind the restructuring of the country, which he himself was once an advocate of.

There are now fears that Asiwaju Tinubu may eventually decide to support the Atiku bid,  using the restructuring issue as his public alibi for doing so. In what some political commentators have described as the ground preparation for the launch of this restructuring campaign, former APC interim national chairman and key Tinubu ally Chief Bisi Akande delivered a talk tagged Devolution Of Powers and National Restructuring at a recent speech in America.

In the paper which he delivered at the APC-USA Second Annual Convention in Washington DC, where he was guest of honour, Chief Akande faulted past military governments that ruled Nigeria for 29 years since independence, for creating what he described as the lopsided political structure of the country. He accused the military of creating states and local governments by fiat for selfish reasons rather than through any scientific political reasoning.

He lamented the fact that the military might have inequitably created more local governments per population per state in the north than in the south of the country, thereby giving the north an unfair advantage in terms of revenue allocation from the national treasury. He therefore called for restructuring, which he described as equitable rearrangement and redistribution of the existing states and local governments per population within the various ethnic nationalities.

Once a campaigner for this view Asiwaju Tinubu is also said to be aware of the fact that he cannot afford to operate in the APC again without a little control of its structure which he  seems to have gotten under the Oshiomole dispensation. According to one party source, Asiwaju Tinubu may not dump the APC but strike a working relationship with Atiku on how to deliver the southwest for the PDP in the presidential elections.

“Tinubu is aware that those calling for the removal of Oshiomhole are also indirectly saying they want Tinubu’s influence withered and with the experience of the Oyegun era when he lost influence in the party still fresh, Asiwaju will naturally review his relationship with the president should Oshiomhole leaves,” the source added.