Apparently dissatisfied, key political figures are scheming to form a new political party ahead of the 2019 Presidential election, that would witness the pairing of a former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, and the incumbent Governor of Ondo State, Olusegun Mimiko, of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, as Presidential candidate and running mate respectively, Post-Nigeria gathered.
According to a highly placed source, the new party will emerge in the last quarter of 2017, even as a positive outcome (for the PDP) of the November 2016 Governorship election in Ondo State, is the likely template for the permutation.
As part of the plan, a meeting between Atiku, who is currently a Chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, APC, and former Presidential candidate and National Chairman of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, Chief Olu Falae, might hold in a couple of weeks, barring the unforeseen.
Falae, an Afenifere Chieftain from Ondo State and a political benefactor of the Governor, is expected to mobilize the pan Yoruba organisation across the South-West, as a ‘counter force to the existing power equation in the region’.
The source said, “Like a nation in want of leadership, proper leadership and a new dawn will soon face the country, because what Nigerians are getting, is not what they bargained for. The change Atiku, Mimiko meeting mantra, appears to be fading and some persons are beginning to think otherwise.
“As it was in the run up to the last Presidential election, whereby hitherto antagonistic persons came together for a common cause and installed the current government, we are looking at the possibility of mobilizing all and sundry to rescue the nation from nepotism.
“From all indications, the current leadership has failed the nation, and if you read what a North-West leader said in an interview, you need no one to tell you that we require a drastic political direction.
“In the process, anything can happen, including the registration of a new political party, or reviving an existing one, because in all the major parties, that is PDP and APC, there are problems.
“So we are going to reach out to our major political bloc, the Afenifere, as well as some of the Third Republic SDP Governors, who are now sidelined in the two parties.”
Asked about the possibility of a new party flourishing in the South-West, when the current Vice President hails from there, the source said it was immaterial.
“They can longer deceive our people, because the truth has come out. They shouted restructuring before election and abandoned it after their victory. Are these people trustworthy? Definitely, a counter-force to the existing power equation in the region is about to be reinvigorated”, the source noted.
However, Atiku has maintained, on many occasions, that he remains a committed member of the APC, but reports have been rife since the beginning of the year, that the former Vice President, has severally complained of being side-lined in the affairs of the party.
His subtle, but controlled criticism of the present government, has been noticed in the last few months, just as he has secretly embarked on a nationwide consultation with his political associates with a view to redirecting his political future.
It will be recalled, that Atiku drew the ire of the Presidency and leadership of the APC, and aside decrying the lack of a focused leadership, he openly canvassed for the restructuring of the country, an idea President Muhammadu Buhari and his Vice, Yemi Osinbajo, have discredited.
He was also said to have equally protested against the return of the erstwhile Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, to the APC.
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