Barring any last minute change of decision, the former National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, might emerge as the Director General of the Presidential Campaign Council of the candidate of APC, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. A party source revealed this to Sunday Telegraph within the week.
The APC and its Presidential candidate had settled for Senator Kashim Shetimma as the running mate. Oshiomhole, the APC Senatorial candidate for Edo North, Edo State was a two-term governor of the state. Oshiomhole also was the President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), the position that brought him to limelight politically. The former NLC President contested the Edo State govermorship election in 2007 under a joint ticket of Labour Party (LP) and Action Congress (AC).
The candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Prof. Osunbor was declared winner of the election but Oshiomhole later reclaimed the victory through a court process. In 2018 June, he was elected the APC National Chairman under a consensus arrangement backed up by President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC National Leader and now Presidential candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Oshiomhole barely served one year before the crisis that snowballed into his sacking started.
He was sacked with other National Working Committee (NWC) members in June 2020. He is a political ally of the APC Presidential candidate right from the days of AC, ACN and APC. According to the party source, Oshiomhole is considered for the job because of his political articulation and strength.
Also the party expects to leverage on his relationship with the NLC as a former President of the Congress. The Edo North Senatorial candidate would have the upheaval task of relating well on the campaign train with the APC governors and other chieftains of the party who sacked him as National Chairman.
However, the source also stated that should the choice of Oshiomhole fails, the party would most likely choose the former governor of Benue State and Minister of Special Duties and Intergovernmental Affairs, Senator George Akume.
The choice of any of these two is to have a balance of Christian -Muslim since the party has settled for Muslim – Muslim Presidential ticket.