The emergence of former governor of Lagos State, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the 2023 general elections was, without a doubt, a well-fought win. In a quite intriguing contest, he ousted 13 other candidates to secure the nomination.

Tinubu was one of the 23 candidates approved to participate in the primary, held in Abuja from 7 to 8 June. Before voting began, seven of the twenty-three candidates surprisingly withdrew and proclaimed their support for Jagaban, Tinubu’s popular alias, while another withdrew in favour of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. Also, one candidate withdrew but did not express support for any of his rivals. Consequently, only 14 of the 23 candidates participated in the primary.

A total of 2,203 accredited delegates were APC party members elected from Nigeria's 774 local government areas.

There are several key things to note about the APC primary election, one of which is that without the demand of party’s northern governors that power should transition to the South after eight years of northern rule, the entire process might have taken a different course. That would have left Tinubu’s aspiration in jeopardy.

Before the primary, the northern APC governors had insisted that the party must nominate a southern candidate for president. They eventually met with President Buhari to pitch this idea and gain his support. As a result, Governor Abubakar Badaru of Jigawa State withdrew from the race. Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State and former Zamfara State governor, Ahmed Sani, however, were not in consonance with their counterparts and continued running for the slot.

APC has fourteen northern governors and if they had adopted an opposing position, Tinubu could easily have lost the election, just as their unified approach had played a huge impact in his victory at the primary.

Secondly, it can be said that the most significant beneficiary of the APC primaries is the party itself. Numerous observers had projected the demise of a ruling party due to crises within the party. The party had been compelled to postpone its convention multiple times to, among other things, prevent the escalation of its issues.

With the successful conclusion of the convention, the APC's multifaceted and multilayered difficulties appear to have been momentarily put on hold.

Mr. Tinubu alluded to this in his victory speech: “It appeared some weeks back that some newspapers and many people were ready to write the obituary of this party. We put together and pulled ourselves as a cat of nine lives.”

“Shame on them, our party is alive,” he remarked.

With his emergence as the APC presidential flagbearer, Tinubu will dig it out with candidates of other parties, including fellow top contenders; Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party and Peter Obi of the Labour Party, on the platform to be elected as the nation’s president in next year’s general election.