By Olusegun Olanrewaju and David Lawani
Ahead of the 2023 general election, particularly the presidential slot, plans may be strongly afoot to ensure that the consensus candidacy module would be used to pick the presidential candidates of the two leading political parties.

The issue of consensus was one of the main reasons why President Muhammadu Buhari failed to sign the Electoral Law on the expiry date last December.

The President only acquiesced to endorsing the Act earlier this year after the consensus clause was inserted as one of the options for candidacy for elective offices by members of the National Assembly.

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Pundits now observe that the issue of consensus now seems to be taking the front burner of politicking among the different shades of political divide currently.

Despite arguments that the module could be unconstitutional, the leadership of both the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the opposition leader, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are all sold out to the idea of using consensus candidacy to pick their respective presidential candidates.

Not that the system is going unchallenged by different forces though, but the feeling is that since the PDP and the APC already took the initial bull by the horns by experimenting with the consensus pattern with the selection of national chairmanship recently, anything could happen.

*APC

Reports that the APC was ‘plotting’ to use the consensus model to pick its presidential candidate started from the APC camp.

Unconfirmed reports alleged that a plot was mushrooming on ways to ‘hand-pick’ a consensus presidential candidate to cap its strategy party leaders were advertising as having been hugely successful with the national convention experimentation which threw Abdullahi Adamu, a senator from Nasarawa State, as the new national chair.

The alleged move and arrangement sparked no little concern that another major crisis was stalking the APC.

Party leaders had said with events that played out at the meeting of APC governors with President Buhari in Aso Villa in the heat of the chairmanship crisis that rocked the Mai Mala Buni-led caretaker committee, especially the table-dragging chairmanship tussle with the Abubakar Bello uprising, “there is a strong indication that the presidency is planning to foist its preferred aspirant on the party in the name of consensus arrangement”.

Amid reports that the presidential ticket of the party had been zoned to the South West, allegations were rife that a consensus arrangement was being engineered to upstage a leading presidential aspirant from the zone, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.

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Top sources in the party said the plot became ‘imperative’ because of Tinubu’s seeming supremacy among other presidential aspirants which put him in a commanding position to emerge as the party’s candidate.

But a chieftain of the party said stakeholders in the party may not agree with the idea of a consensus presidential candidate as it will deprive party members of the choice of picking the best.

*PDP

In the PDP camp, Oyo State Governor, Seyi Makinde, has also flown a kite on the party’s trajectory to use the consensus module to pick its presidential candidate, though amid reservations from some quarters

According to the governor’s Chief Press Secretary (CPS), Taiwo Adisa, Makinde said that the presidential candidate of the PDP for the 2023 election would be “someone that has everybody’s buy-in”.

Receiving leading presidential hopefuls of the party at the Government House, Agodi, Ibadan, Makinde was quoted as saying that the party would ensure the presidential candidate emerges through a consensus arrangement.

*United front, key to PDP victory in 2023, says Wike

Harping on unity, a frontline presidential aspirant from the South-South, Rivers State governor, Nyesom Wike, directly avoided the use of the word ‘consensus’

Hosting a closed meeting with some presidential candidates jostling for the ticket on the platform of PDP at the Government House, Port Harcourt, including co-contestants, Bauchi State governor, Bala Mohammed; Sokoto State governor, Aminu Tambuwal; former Senate President, Bukola Saraki, and the former Managing Director of FSB International Bank, Mohammed Hayatu-Deen, Wike, who spoke to reporters after the meeting, said their interest was to ensure that there is unity in the party.

He also expressed their interest in making Nigerians “happy by developing a formidable strategy that would enable the PDP coast to victory in the 2023 presidential election”.

The presidential aspirant noted, “Our interest is the unity of the party. Our interest is to make Nigerians happy by making sure that by 2023, PDP takes over the reins of government because Nigerians are patiently waiting.

“And I can assure you that we are going to work as a team to make Nigerians happy.”

*Saraki, Tambuwal, Mohammed meet with Rivers gov

The leader of the delegation, Senator Saraki, said, “We are here to have a discussion, and we just finished talking about how the best way for us to reunite our party, bring unity among all those who are aspiring to lead this country under PDP.”

He added, “We all realise the importance of this, and PDP is the only option ready to redirect this country in the right direction and bring progress and provide a better future for our people.

“We have been to some of the other states and today, we are here with the governor of Rivers State, a key stakeholder of this party, to discuss frankly.”

“He has given us his views and made some suggestions, and we will continue to work with that as we move away from here. But, the key thing is unity, the key thing is to put the country first and put the party first,” Saraki stated.

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*Ortom insists party’s NEC will make final pronouncement on zoning

Chairman of PDP’s zoning committee and Governor of Benue State, Samuel Ortom, yesterday tried to debunk claims that the party was jettisoning its zoning arrangement.

But he reiterated his earlier statement that members-only reached a ‘unanimous agreement’ on zoning the presidential ticket.

It had been earlier reported that a decision reached during a meeting on Tuesday of the 37-man committee set up by the party, threw open the presidential ticket.

A Facebook post by a former Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Olisa Metuh, had thanked the party leadership for ‘electing reasoning over sentiment’ by taking the decision suggesting that the PDP may have finally bowed to pressure to throw the slot open.

But Ortom said that the committee did not throw the presidential ticket open as alleged by the media.

Ortom, who was on Arise Television yesterday, said that as the chairman of the zoning committee, they didn’t throw the presidential ticket open, they only reverted to the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the party.

“It is wrong for anybody to say that we threw open the presidential ticket. We have to revert to NEC. It is wrong for the media to come up with a position, and the media were not members of the committee. During our discussion, the media were not there.

“After the meeting, I came out to brief the media, so it was surprising to see the headlines on newspapers, televisions, and radios. We have to correct that because it is wrong.

According to him, NEC is the final authority on deciding on zoning, stressing that it is true that when the party positions were being zoned he was the deputy chairman of the committee and they agreed as directed by the NEC that in zoning party positions they should do it right without minding where the president would come from, but restrict ourselves to party positions so that when the time comes for presidential zoning, NEC would take a decision.

“I believe in justice and fairness, when the issues came up last year, I made my position known. PDP has not yet brought out any report; it will be done by NEC.

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“I want to appeal to all Nigerians who are passionate because some of them have spoken to me; they want PDP to get it right. We are consciously ensuring that the right thing is done, so I believe that in the end, by the grace of God, we will get it right but pre-empting the committee’s work and NEC’s decision is not right.

“I want to appeal that they should allow NEC to invite us to a meeting and soon a decision will be taken. People who have recommendations or observations can present them to the chairman of our party or some of us, and on the day that we are discussing, we can make their views known,” hew said.

*Throwing ticket open is suicidal– Ohanaeze

Meanwhile, the Ohanaeze Ndigbo yesterday said PDP committed political suicide by throwing its presidential ticket open ahead of the 2023 general elections.

President-General of Ohanaeze, Ambassador George Obiozor, stated this while reacting to the decision of the Governor Ortom-led PDP committee on the zoning of the presidential ticket.

In a statement by Alex Ogbonnia, the National Publicity Secretary of Ohanaeze, Obiozor expressed worries on why PDP jettisoned zoning when ‘it is the turn of the South and particularly the South East of Nigeria’.

He said, “For purposes of clarity, rotation and zoning principle was engrained into the PDP constitution in 2009.

“Article 7 (2) (c) of the PDP Constitution states: ‘In pursuance of the principle of equity, justice, and fairness, the party shall adhere to the policy of rotation and zoning of the party and public elective offices, and it shall be enforced by the appropriate executive committee at all levels.’”

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Obiozor therefore ‘deplored the unconscionable shifting of the goalpost at the middle of the game’.

According to him, “Such unscrupulous violation of the zoning principle that has been well entrenched in the PDP constitution simply changes the rules of the game to deprive Ndigbo the opportunity to produce a president for Nigeria.

“It is a political blunder and betrayal given what Ndigbo have suffered in our own country, and most recently for supporting the PDP.

“History has never been kind to betrayers and the treacherous. The machinations and conspiracies to deny Ndigbo their due place in Nigeria are an ingratitude that daily cries to God.”

He said Ohanaeze’s stance on the position of the Southern and Middle Belt Leadership Forum, led by Chief E K Clark, that any party that does not zone its presidential ticket to the South should not expect the support of the Middle Belt and the entire South.