These are two different scenarios.
First, Yar’adua unfortunately died in office after spending less than 3 years and Jonathan, being his vice president took over.
And after completing that term, he contested and won and he was expected to not contest again for a northerner to run but GEJ re-contested and that was a big reason he lost. (Tinubu on the other hand, succeeded a northerner who completed his two terms.)
However, even at that, he was not to lose if the opposition did not come together to form a true national party to neutralize the then monstrous PDP.
Tinubu came with 6 governors of the old Western Region excluding only Ekiti and Delta states. (Fayose of PDP was the governor of Ekiti and Uduaghan was the governor of Delta state as at then).
Buhari came with Al Makura, the governor of Nasarawa State with over 10 million votes mostly across the north.
The union was so promising that five PDP called the G-5 joined with Atiku, Saraki etc.
So effectively, APC had 12 governors with Buhari’s 10 million standby votes.
Those governors included the governors of Kano, Lagos, Oyo and Rivers.
Four of the ten states with the highest number of voters and at the end of the exercise, only Amaechi failed to deliver a reasonable figure for fPMB.
What do we have now?
A coalition with no single governor.
A coalition whose proposed candidate does not command a large number of votes as Buhari.
A coalition that has no leader who is in charge of any of the six geopolitical zones as Tinubu was at the formation to APC.
A coalition that can not attract a governor from a broken house called PDP where an unknown Accord even has one.
A coalition that thinks that making Obi Atiku’s running mate will give them victory without acknowledging and accepting the fact that most Obedients want Obi or nothing.
A coalition that watches as all Niger Delta states coalesce into APC.
A coalition that made no impact in the last Anambra state gubernatorial election where it recorded zero votes in most polling units across the state.
A coalition that does not know that Tinubu is presently wooing Kano state and even Adamawa, the home state of the leader of the coalition with Taraba and Plateau already done.
Let me conclude by acknowledging that matter how glaring it is that the two scenarios are completely different, I do not expect them amti openly admit this fact.
