Zoning Tears APC Apart, Party Mulls Fresh Sale Of Forms, Targets El-rufai, Zulum

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has remained divided on the zoning of its presidential ticket, just as it continues to ponder the option of reopening the sale of forms.

The party is billed to hold its rescheduled presidential primaries on Monday, June 6, to pick a candidate that would match the political weight of Atiku Abubakar, who is the candidate of the PDP.

The current state of play in the APC, has been further compounded by the differing positions of its stakeholders on the zoning palaver, a development, which has seen some governors insisting on going south for balancing, while the National Chairman of the party, Senator Abdulahi Adamu, in cahoots with a few others, would rather go north, for political expediency.

Interestingly, the development, has pushed the party leadership to consider the reopening of sales of Expression of Interest and Nomination forms to more members by way of broadening its choices for a suitable presidential candidate, that would secure the confidence of the people and lead the party to victory.

Already, two persons being encouraged to join the race, are the Governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai and his Borno State counterpart, Professor Babagana Zulum, even though the later has since dismissed the idea of looking at other possibilities in 2023, except returning to Borno to finish off what he has started.

The APC was first thrown into confusion, when Atiku emerged candidate of the PDP at a keenly contested presidential primaries in Abuja, a situation, which completely unsettled the thinking and extrapolations in the ruling party.

Unfortunately, the confusion was further accentuated on Monday, when President Muhammadu Buhari, at a meeting with the 22 governors of the party and Adamu, pleaded with the stakeholders to let him choose his successor as a sign of reciprocity.

Buhari, in a two-page speech, reminded the governors that, while those governors, who just served their first terms, had a field day securing their tickets to return to office, the outgoing ones, after serving out their constitutional two terms of eight years, also had the privileges to choose their successors.