In this piece, JOHN ALECHENU x-rays the upcoming presidential primaries of the All Progressives Congress and posits that as the race for the party ticket approaches a climax, the partys fortunes are tied to its outcome
Barring any last minute changes, in exactly one week from today, Wednesday December 10, 2014 to be precise, the opposition All Progressives Congress will unveil its presidential candidate.
This, fact, is not lost to some of the contenders in the race for the ticket.
For more than a decade, members of the opposition tried but failed to come together to form a formidable challenge to the political behemoth which the ruling Peoples Democratic Party has come to represent.
For the first time in recent political memory, this jinx was broken with the formation of the APC from the ashes of what used to be the Action Congress of Nigeria, the All Nigerian Peoples Party and the Congress for Progressive Change, not forgetting a faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance.
The personal ambitions of individual party leaders were suspended as opposition leaders appeared determined to build a platform to wrest power from the ruling party.
Keen observers of the new party were aware of the fact that some of these leaders joined the merger based on certain assurances.
The most outstanding of these leaders are Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) and former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar.
In fact, Buhari, a serial presidential candidate under the defunct ANPP and later the CPC, was said to have been convinced to join in the formation of the APC based on an understanding that he will be handed the ticket.
For a while, most of his supporters especially those within the party, were under the impression that the partys ticket was his for the taking.
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D-Day beckons for APC presidential aspirants