APC Seeks Unity While Choosing candidates to fight PDP tomorrow

►APC Seeks Unity While Choosing candidates to fight PDP tomorrow.

►It's Buhari vs Atiku: APC set to elect presidential candidate.

Buhari and a former vice president are battling for the nomination of Nigeria’s main opposition party to challenge President Goodluck Jonathan in February elections.

The chosen nominee will be announced at the end of the convention tomorrow, according to Lai Mohammed, APC’s spokesman

The choice of the two-day All Progressives Congress primary that starts today in the commercial capital, Lagos, may be less important than whether the group formed last year by the three main opposition parties can stay united to challenge Jonathan’s handling of an Islamist insurgency and falling oil prices.

“If the agreement to stick together regardless of the outcome of the primaries does not work, then of course we might not have a chance to see a strong opposition against Jonathan,” Emmanuel Remi Aiyede, a senior lecturer of political science at the University of Ibadan, said by phone.
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Of the five candidates, the main fight in the APC is between 71-year-old ex-military dictator Muhammadu Buhari, who has lost three of the four presidential votes since Nigeria returned to civilian rule in 1999, and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, 68. Both are northern Muslims, while Jonathan, 57, is a Christian from the Niger River delta, the heart of Africa’s biggest oil industry.

The chosen nominee will be announced at the end of the convention tomorrow, according to Lai Mohammed, APC’s spokesman.

“Judging by historical precedent of party primaries in Nigeria, there is a high likelihood of a split emerging in the APC in the post-primaries period,” Manji Cheto, vice-president of corporate advisory company Teneo Intelligence, said in a Dec. 9 e-mailed note.