Osinbajo camp sets post-Buhari era targets

Mutterings over a widening gulf in the Presidency with associates of President Muhammadu Buhari and those of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo pursuing stealthy separate political aspirations have surfaced.

While the two camps remain united in achieving victory for the joint Buhari/Osinbajo ticket in the 2019 presidential election, multiple sources, however, note a divergent of aspiration thereafter.

While the aspirations of Osinbajo as a person concerning 2023 remain sketchy, if not doubtful, there are indications that those around him are making plans for their camp’s sustenance in a post-Buhari era.

The plans are partly premised on the possibility that the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, may no longer have the force of unity provided by Buhari when the president steps out of office. Those plans, including the shopping around for alternative political platforms, are quietly causing distress among concerned political interests.

Those projections, sources in Abuja disclosed, helped to cause the crisis in one of the newly registered political parties which, it was gathered, had been taken over by proxies of those in the Osinbajo camp.

The outworking of the plans has also rubbed negatively on some associates of the president who accuse the Osinbajo camp of overreaching itself in its political agenda.

A close associate of the president embedded within the camp of the cabal, as it is called, particularly expressed displeasure with what he claimed as tendencies by associates of the vice-president to paint the image of him being a better performer than the president.

The associate believed to be involved in many of the administration’s political agenda was particularly miffed by what he claimed as projections that tend to make the vice-president look good at the expense of the president.

 A senior aide of the vice-president has, however, dismissed the claims as baseless and inspired by enemies of the administration determined to cause a fracture where he said none exists.

The scenario, it was alleged, was akin to the situation in the first half of the Olusegun Obasanjo/Atiku Abubakar presiden-cy, where the former vice-president was alleged to have inspired plots towards political ascendancy.