The president-elect,Tinubu was due to return to the nation soon to begin planning for his inauguration as the 16th President on May 29.
According to a recent statement from the president-elect's office, signed by Tunde Rahman, the trip would give the president-elect the chance to fine-tune the transition plans and programs as well as his policy options with some of his key aides without undue pressure or distraction.
The president-elect met Rabiu Kwankwaso, the head of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), in Paris while traveling in Europe.
According to investigations conducted by a news source, Abdulmumin Jibrin, a representative-elect from Kano State, and a close friend of Kwankwaso were mostly responsible for arranging the meeting.
Jibrin served as Tinubu Support Groups' previous director general and coordinator. He had left that position to run for re-election to the House of Representatives on February 25 as a member of the NNPP, which was just being started at the time.
According to a source who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak on the subject, Jibrin's connections to both Tinubu and Kwankwaso gave him the advantage of being in a position to arrange the meeting.
"Yes, he was in the middle of it, don’t forget Kwankwaso is his political mentor and, of course, he was Tinubu’s first campaign DG,†the source said of Jibrin. “So, he was able to broker rapprochement between them after some calls back and forth, a deal was reached that culminated in the meeting in France,†the source added.
Kwankwaso was reported to have agreed to collaborate with Tinubu and join his planned Government of National Unity (GNU) following the meeting, which some associates of the two political heavyweights who were thought to have been privy to the negotiations regarded as successful.
Remember that before he left the country, Tinubu met with the candidates for Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Tajudeen Abbas and Hon. Benjamin Kalu, who had been submitted to him by the Joint Task Team of the House and had been backed by his party, the All Progressives Congress.
Senator Godswill Akpabio, a former Niger Delta Affairs minister from Akwa Ibom State in the south, was given the party's official endorsement for Senate President, and Tajudeen Abbas, a representative from Kaduna State in the north, was given the endorsement for Speaker of the House of Representatives.
However, the zoning arrangement has caused strife within the party, with resentful lawmakers calling the zoning undemocratic and unlawful.
Senator Abdulahi Adamu, the party's national chairman, had acknowledged that the party's leadership had not held extensive consultations before announcing the zoning plan.
However, Adamu urged the irate members to refrain from retaliating and give the party's leadership a chance to review the situation.
Further discussions over the zoning pattern are anticipated to continue whenever Tinubu returns to the nation on Saturday.