The camp of the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu, has shown its displeasure over the growing popularity of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo for the 2023 Presidential race which, claimed, may have been endorsed by President Muhammadu Buhari.
According to Vanguard, sources in the Tinubu camp are concerned about the APC Chieftain's chances in 2023 as Osinbajo may be the preferred candidate Buhari mentioned during his Channels Television interview.
Buhari had during the interview declined to name his candidate for the 2023 presidential election, saying there might be an attempt on the aspirant if he did so.
The complaint by the Tinubu camp came against the background of high-level endorsements and gesticulations by canvassers of the Vice-President’s alleged 2023 presidential aspiration.
The endorsements have been especially manifest in the North and recently moved downwards to the South with Delta State as its first launch pad.
The Tinubu camp, which has vowed not to raise the issue with the Presidency is, however, miffed on how Osinbajo’s name is being mentioned and projected everywhere for the 2023 presidential election with his boss, Buhari, looking the other way.
“You cannot tell me that the President does not know anything about this and that his deputy is being worked up to take his office and he is ignorant? No, no,” a highly placed confidant of Tinubu revealed yesterday.
There are also reports that the Vice President’s spokesman, Laolu Akande, had, recently, denied reports that Osinbajo had, on New Year Day, visited the President to seek his blessing for the 2023 presidential election.
In rebuffing the reports, he said Osinbajo was fixed on delivering assignments as handed to him by the Buhari presidency.
However, the Tinubu camp remained nonplussed over what was alleged as a secret agenda with the source saying, “How can your subordinate be moving about like that as if you have anointed him for your office? You send him here and there to expose him?
“If you have a wife and she is misbehaving, who am I to complain when you the husband are indifferent? So, we will keep on watching.”
Asked if Osinbajo and Tinubu had met over the Vice-President’s reported aspiration, the source, who ordinarily should know, replied curtly, “I don’t know, but you should know.”
The worries of the Tinubu camp, it was learnt, have been worsened by the dithering procrastination of the APC to hold a National Convention to elect a new set of national officers.