The founder and pioneer national chairman of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), Senator Rufai Hanga, has disclosed that while Nigerians look forward to a change of leadership in 2023, there votes may not be useful because the next President has already been chosen.
Hanga who spoke to Daily Trust, said there is an existing agreement that the national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and former governor of Lagos State, Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu, would take over from Buhari in 2023, irrespective who Nigerians chose to vote for, in the next election.
“This is an open secret. There was an implied agreement. Even in law, there is implied and expressed act. If something is expressed, there are no two ways about it. There was an implied agreement that he would take over. That is why he didn’t back out after the first tenure. If Tinubu knew that he would not benefit, he would have backed out during Buhari’s first tenure. But he knows there was an agreement,” he said.
Hanga however, said the only way to deny Tinubu the Presidency, is for the APC to deny him the party's ticket, a situation he said will not end well for the party.
Former governor of Zamfara State and two-term senator, Senator Ahmad Sani Yarima, has previously said dismissed reports of an existing agreement between Buhari and Tinubu, saying even if there is such an agreement, Buhari lacks the power to decide who and where the next President should come from.
Yarima who himself is vying for the presidency, said President Muhammadu Buhari and Tinubu are free to make deals and even sign it with pens made of gold, but that does not mean they own the country.
He said, "I don’t think Nigeria belongs to any of them and I don’t think anyone in any position can determine what Nigeria should have.
"Politics is about election – for people to decide what they want. So it is the majority of the people that will determine who they want.
"If he signed an agreement with Asiwaju, that agreement cannot be implemented even in getting the ticket. It cannot guarantee Asiwaju a ticket."
Meanwhile, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), and former presidential candidate, Chief Chekwas Okorie, said the purported agreement should not be a basis for transfer of power, insisting that President Buhari lacks the power as an individual to appoint Tinubu a presidential candidate because it does not exist in the constitution of the APC.
He said Tinubu should lobby, just like any other aspirant in the party.
“If there was such agreement, it was gentlemanly. It does not exist in the APC constitution or any democratic norm. It does not exist in the Nigerian constitution.
“If there was such agreement, it wouldn’t have been when Buhari was sworn in as president. And it wouldn’t have been written.
“It was a gamble, as far as I am concerned. So I will say that if Asiwaju is relying on that agreement, he sold ‘the market’ on credit. That is the basic political description of what he did.
“Will President Buhari tell the party not to observe all the necessary processes that would lead to the election of a presidential candidate and simply foist Asiwaju on us? That one will not be democratic, and it is not possible. It will be a sure way of leading the party to defeat in 2023. And I know that President Buhari would want to see the party continue after him.
“That type of agreement does not affect all of us in the party,” Okorie said