The
much anticipated merger of leading opposition parties, the Congress for
Progressive Change (CPC) and the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), will
be finalised in June, General Muhammadu Buhari has said.
Gen. Buhari, who is the National Leader of the CPC, spoke in Abuja
yesterday during the inauguration of the 18-man committee on the merger.
The committee is chaired by the former Deputy Governor of Bauchi State , Alhaji Garba Gadi.
The former head of state, blaming the nation’s woes on inept
leadership, said the only way to stave off the drift is for the
opposition parties to unite with the sole aim of winning the 2015
general elections.
Noting that the merger has become imperative, Gen. Buhari said unity
of the people, unity of political parties and unity of the opposition
was no longer an option.
He disclosed that the first phase of the merger – and not alliance –
is between CPC and the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) . The All
Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP) and others will join later.
What Nigerians want, Gen. Buhari said, is a merger of opposition
parties to dislodge the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the
2015 presidential election.
Asked if he will still run, he said he may contest, if the new party offers him the ticket.
“In 2010, we went very far with ACN. Now, we are picking priority. We
are going to aggressively go through our terms of reference with the
ACN before we meet with another party,” Gen. Buhari said, adding: “I
have said it and it is on record that I will not present myself again
for election. But after that, members of my party, groups and
individuals came to me and said I do not belong to myself, that I belong
to them. I told the party that if they approach me, I will consider
contesting election. This is the position of things. I have mentioned
this several times. If we have the merger, it will be much easier for me
and the new party then can decide wether it will offer me the
presidential ticket for 2015.”
Gen. Buhari said after a successful merger of ACN and CPC, the new party may be presented to Nigerians by June.
He advised the committee members not to compromise their stand on the merger because Nigerians want a change for development.
His words: “As we all sadly know, the nation is, once again, at a
crossroads, stumbling from one disaster to another, simply because its
leaders lack unity of purpose and even if they sometimes look like
coming together, this has never been marshalled into a coherent,
irresistible force by the opposition. But the opposition itself has not
been able to get its act together because it is not united. In Nigeria
today, therefore, unity of the people, unity of political parties and
unity of the opposition is no longer an option. It has become a national
imperative.
“And, thankfully, everyone is finally coming round to accept the
necessity for it. Right now, so strong is the belief in unity as seen in
the merger of our two parties that the sentiments expressed
on both sides sound as if the two parties may merge on their own even
before their representatives reach the roundtable. The sentiment today
is for a full merger between ACN and CPC, not an alliance or an
electoral understanding or anything of the sort.”
On the task before the committee members, which he described as huge,
Gen. Buhari said: “What Nigerians want is merger and that is what you
are going to negotiate and bring home to them. There is already in
existence an unexecuted understanding between the CPC and the ACN for
the creation of a new party, with a brand new logo and a new flag
already designed and all other paraphernalia of a political party put in
place.
“At the risk of sounding overly too optimistic, I may suggest that you should be able to finish your work
in six weeks, at the end of which the CPC and ACN should be in a
position to sign a declaration of intent to fuse their parties into one.
“After signing the declaration, it should not take more than another
six weeks for the parties to pursue the matter within their own
constitutional context to ensure that the issue is legitimated through
the proper procedures and progresses of its own organs. It is not
impossible that the new party is presented to Nigeria by the middle of
this year.”
Gen. Buhari vowed that the proposed party would begin to plan the
creation of a new security architecture for the country and, possibly,
for the entire sub-region and the restoration “of traditional intelligent gathering techniques to shore up a police force that has so obviously failed.
“We do not have money and we are shunned by most of those who do. We
do not have a police force and our supporters are victims of those who
do. We do not have the government on our side and we are always short
changed by it as it misapplies its federal might not to conduct credible
elections, but to rig us out of our mandate. The ones we have on our
side are God and the people and those are sufficient for us,” Buhari
added.
NaijaCenter
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