2023: Osinbajo Considers Kwankwaso as Running Mate
POLITICS DIGEST- There are strong indications that the camp of Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo has reached out to former governor of Kano state, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, ahead of the 2023 general elections.
Osinbajo has not formally declared his ambition to contest for the presidency but sources close to him said preparations are on to make that declaration.
According to a reliable source quoted by Daily Trust, Kwankwaso has been contacted by Osinbajo’s camp as well as the chairman of the national caretaker committee of the APC, Mai Mala Buni, to return to the APC.
“Serious talks are ongoing between oga and them. They want him to return to APC but the option is being weighed. It has not been sealed,” he said.
Asked if his boss will accept to pair with Osinbajo as running mate in 2023, he said Kwankwaso was open to all options, adding that “No decision has been taken. What I can tell you is that discussions are ongoing.”
The source added that Kwankwaso is in a tight corner as the 2023 general elections get closer.
Impeccable sources around Kwankwaso who spoke to Daily Trust, said the two-time presidential aspirant would soon make his new political direction known.
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Daily Trust reports that the chances of Kwankwaso – who came second in the 2014 presidential primaries of the All Progressives Congress (APC) won by President Muhammadu Buhari – to pick the presidential ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for 2023 have become slimmer.
However, aware of the intrigues and horse-trading in the leading opposition party, Kwankwaso is said to be weighing three options. He joined PDP at the build up to the 2019 general elections.
In Kano, which is the headquarters of the Kwankwasiyya Movement, the talk among the political class is that the relative silence of Kwankwaso is a signal that salient moves are being made towards either defecting from the PDP or floating a new movement or what some analysts have called a third force.
A senior member of the former governor’s camp told Daily Trust that Kwankwaso is weighing three options. He said the first option before the Kwankwasiyya leader is to form a new movement.
“I know by the end of this month or in early March, he and a team of some prominent politicians he has mobilised are coming up with a movement, not a political party,” he said.
He said though some Kwankwaso’s associates, including Buba Galadima and Senator Suleiman Hunkuyi, want the movement to be transformed into a political party, Kwankwaso was not in support of that.
“He is of the view that a new political party won’t fly and might be impossible to register before 2023. So, it’s based on this that he wants the movement to be used as a platform to negotiate with an existing political party,” he said.
Daily Trust.
