With the victory of Buhari on March 28th 2015, the balance of power in Nigeria has changed for the foreseeable future.

Expect a lot of changes over the course of the next few months. Buhari will overhaul the entire Nigerian system as we currently know it. Several of the people who have been at the corridors of power for the past decade, will soon become pawns or mere spectators in the grand scheme of things.

With the victory of Buhari on March 28th 2015, the balance of power in Nigeria has changed for the foreseeable future.

Expect a lot of changes over the course of the next few months. Buhari will overhaul the entire Nigerian system as we currently know it. Several of the people who have been at the corridors of power for the past decade, will soon become pawns or mere spectators in the grand scheme of things.

The obvious casualties at the national level are people like David Mark, Ngozi Iweala, Allison Dizeani, Femi Fani Kayode, Edwin Clark, Doyin Okukpe, Rueben Abati etc, and on the home-front people like Sarah Ochekpe (minister of water resources) and David Paradang (Immigration controller), can begin to pack their bags at the end of their tenures.

Expect, Buhari to begin to raise a new brand of APC henchmen who will affect the affairs of things on the Plateau. He will depart from the old brigade of PDP politicians and may ultimately pick people who have largely been in obscurity in the past few years. People like Dasuki Salisu Nakande, Amb. Yahaya Kwande, Solomon Dalung, Dame Mrs. Pauline Tallen, Hon. Letep Dabang, Brig. John Shagaya, Prof. Emmanuel Garba will feature prominently.

Regardless of who wins the governorship election on 11th February, expect the politics of the centre (i.e., Buhari and his henchmen) to be a lot more powerful than whoever is governing Plateau.

Amb. Yahaya Kwande – from an analysis point of view –we (ViewPointNigeria), expect Amb. Yahaya Kwande to be a key player in the Buhari dispensation. Yahaya Kwande has constantly been a critic of the Goodluck Jonathan administration and has won acclaim from top APC stalwarts in the past for his perpetual vitriol on Goodluck Jonathan. His profile has also been steadily on the rise in the past few years, with the double victory of his son Hon. Suleiman Kwande, as the member representing Jos North/Bassa Federal constituency. We are still not sure, in what capacity he would feature in the Buhari administration –but we know for sure that he’d be a major force –especially if Simon Lalong wins.

Dasuki Salisu Nakande – may also make a comeback to the national stage. Having been sidelined since the death of Shehu Musa Yar’adua (when he was minister). We expect him to forge his way into reckoning in the Buhari Dispensation, given his level of ambition since leaving the national stage. His profile in the Hausa/Fulani community has steadily been on the rise, since starting Unity FM a few years ago. In his community, he is view as a leader, and therefore expect him to take advantage of that to seek higher reckoning. He remains a polarising figure in most of Plateau, because of his stance on the crisis in Plateau when Gen. Danbazzau and Gen. Saleh Maina brutalised and killed several Plateau citizens, but he is respected in the Hausa community.

Solomon Dalung – A staunch critic of Governor Jang and a darling of the Northern Hausa Fulani establishment. Expect Solomon Dalung to be a massive beneficiary of this dispensation. He has been a firm supporter of the APC and has featured prominently in Northern affairs, including being a member of the Northern Elders Forum. He counts many northern APC governors as his personal friends, as such – he’d be one of the people who would become prominent in this dispensation. Several Plateau people have expressed their disapproval to his stance and have accused him of betraying his political mentor (Solomon Lar) –but he remains an ally of people in Northern Nigeria.

Pauline Tallen – After falling out of favour in PDP, Tallen decamped to APC –at the right time. She has since been a vocal critic of the PDP administration and we believe her doggedness as well as the fact that she is a woman from the middlebelt will make her a key player. However, the fact that Tallen was in PDP for a long time (was a minister under a PDP government and was close to Dame Patience Jonathan, Turai Yar’adua and the Late Stella Obasanjo) and only just decamped to the APC recently, may count against her, given that the current APC leaders are trying to steer away from recycling past PDP stalwarts.

John Shagaya – Having lost out on the APC state nomination to Simon Lalong, John Shagaya went on to campaign for the Plateau South Senatorial seat and lost. We believe that his profile as former APC state chairman and supporter of Simon lalong could bring him to reckoning –should Simon Lalong win the election. However, Shagaya was one of the soldiers who ousted Buhari from power in 1984 (along with IBB). Buhari, it has been said, does not forgive -so this may be a massive problem for Shagaya in APC.

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Plateau Politicians who will feature prominently in Buhari’s Administration