The CPC’s poor showing in the North’s parliamentary polls could be an indication that the region’s influential conservative politicians, whom Buhari took on when, as an army general, he toppled the Second Republic in a bloodless coup in December 1983, have neither forgiven nor forgotten. Talks are ongoing between the CPC, the ACN, which is fielding Nuhu Ribadu, the former anti-corruption czar as presidential candidate, and the All Nigeria Peoples Party, a minor party running Ibrahim Shekarau as its nominee, to field a joint candidate.