The race for the 2023 presidency may have begun in earnest as a former Deputy National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Bode George, has indicated interest in the number one position in the land. Though the PDP leader in Lagos is yet to formally announce his intention, some of his supporters and close aides have started mobilising for him.
Feelers told our correspondent yesterday that George is strongly interested in the raace. In fact, a new group known as the Pathfinder Consortium emerged yesterday ostensibly to champion the ambition of George, who was one-time PDP Vice-Chairman in the South-West, Deputy National Chairman (South) and Deputy National Chairman in the PDP headquarters. The group is led by Prince Uthman Shodipe-Dosumu, a Special Adviser to Bode George, as Director-General.
It would be recalled that George indicated interest to be the National Chairman of the party during the last convention of the party where Prince Uche Secondus emerged as the party’s Chairman. With President Muhammadu Buhari, a Northerner, completing his eight-year tenure in 2023, there has been strong nationwide clamour for the zoning of the presidency to the South.
The PDP also hinted recently it was shopping for a consensus candidate to fly the party’s flag in 2023. Also in Lagos, several groups and stakeholders have started clamouring for the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu for the 2023 presidency. Shodipe-Dosunmu in a statement yesterday tagged: “2023: The Pathfinder is coming”, said a “pathfinder” who is believed to be Chief Bode George “is already warming up.” The statement read: “The big game is afoot. The Grandmasters are now at the chessboard.
The maneuverings are deepening in thoughtful articulations and firm, deliberate commitment. “The schemings are widening far beyond the bright and the nocturnal passages. It is settled! “Our visions stripped of ethnic or sectarian articulations. It is about rebuilding the broken walls, rectifying the festering wrongs, healing the persisting wounds. “The Pathfinder is warming up….Serious business! Watch out! Link up with a New Beginning! Be a part of a New Vision! “We are aroused with a bold, audacious and redeeming leadership.
We will engage, inform without derogatory withdrawal. “We will challenge, debate, instruct without angry, expletive crudity. We will sustain and affirm in deliberate Churchillian supremacy. “Pretenders and the perennial time-servers shall disappear from the fray. Only the robust and the lucid patriotic band shall endure. “And the dark, disruptive uncertainties shall cease, giving way to a renewal and a rebirth of democratic contention. Soon, very soon, we will unveil the Big Masquerade.”
