Nigeria’s ruling party picks candidate for 2023 presidential election
More than 2,300 delegates from Nigeria’s ruling party are meeting in Abuja on Tuesday, where the All Progressives Congress (APC) is holding its primaries to choose its candidate for the 2023 presidential election.
Voters in Africa’s most populous country will go to the polls on 25 February 2023 as President Muhammadu Buhari steps down at the end of his second term, as provided for in the constitution.
At Eagle square, the venue for the primary. Hundreds of activists wearing the party’s colours – green, white and red – were massing along the avenues, waving flags as they awaited the arrival of the delegates, an AFP reporter noted
Twenty-three personalities in the running for this primary hope to become the APC candidate for this election.
In a country that has been battling criminal and Jihadist violence, the issue of security will be crucial during this primaries.
Among the leading APC candidates are the party’s historic leader Bola Tinubu, current vice president Yemi Osinbajo, former transport minister Rotimi Amaechi and Senate president Ahmad Lawan.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has not declared support for any of the candidates asking that “delegates be free to decide”, his spokesman has said on the eve of the party’s primaries
The main opposition party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), already chose its candidate last week, in the person of Atiku Abubakar, a former vice-president and wealthy businessman from the north, who is running for the presidency for the sixth time in three decades.
Mr Abubakar and the APC candidate will be competing with others for the presidency of a country plagued by widespread insecurity, from the jihadist insurgency in the north-east
