Breaking: After Osinbajo’s Declaration, Tinubu Meets APC Governors

Sequel to the formal declaration for a presidential run by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, earlier today, a frontline presidential hopeful and one of the national leaders of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, is billed to meet with governors of the ruling party later tonight in Abuja, the nation’s capital.

According to THISDAY sources, Tinubu had asked to meet with the APC governors last Thursday, but had to shift the meeting, because some of the governors could not honour the invitation at the time following other commitments.

“It’s not true. He (Tinubu) requested for a meeting last Thursday and it would happen tonight. The same people, who attended Osinbajo’s meeting would attend his own,” a source close to the governors, hinted, when asked if it was true that the governors turned him (Tinubu) down last night after meeting with Osinbajo. 

Tinubu’s meeting tonight is, therefore, contrary to speculations that the former Lagos State governor, had requested to meet with the governors immediately after Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the current governor of the state, allegedly told him they met with Osinbajo last night and they turned him down.

The APC leader was the first presidential hopeful to meet with President Muhammadu Buhari to intimate him about his intention to succeed him in 2023 and had since then escalated consultations in view of what he described as his life-long ambition, a development that had seen many support groups rise in solidarity with his ambition. 

Apart from traveling the whole of South-west to meet with stakeholders and traditional rulers; traveling far north to consult and sell his candidacy, as well as meeting with the members of the National Assembly at different times to seek their support, Tinubu was reported to have also taken his consultation abroad at some point to further expand his campaign network.

It is against this backdrop that he has slated to meet with the APC governors tonight, as major stakeholders in the party with huge financial backing, a move that could not have been precipitated by Osinbajo’s meeting with some of the governors last night, since he had requested to meet them since last Thursday.Although details of the meeting was not hinted by the THISDAY sources, it could not have been far from his presidential consultations, especially, that the presidential primaries are just a few weeks away, and with Osinbajo now in the race.