BY CLIFFORD NDUJIHE & GABRIEL EWEPU
To present a popular presidential flagbearer, meets tomorrow
DETERMINED to beat the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP at the 2015
presidential polls after suffering a series of defeats collectively and
individually since 1999, opposition party leaders engaged in merger
negotiations will meet in Abuja tomorrow barring unforeseen
circumstances.
At the parley, Vanguard gathered that leaders drawn from six leading
opposition parties will hammer out modalities for a merger. Parties
involved in the talks are the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Congress
for Progressive Change (CPC), All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP),
Democratic Peoples Party (DPP), All Progressives Grand Alliance and
Labour Party.
After agreeing on the issues of party name, logo, manifesto,
constitution, symbol, composition of state and national executive
committees among others, the leaders said the next hurdle would be
presenting a nationally acceptable and popular presidential flagbearer,
who would confront and beat President Goodluck Jonathan or any other
candidate the PDP would field for the race to Aso Rock in 2015.
The leaders, who are conscious of the constitutional hurdles to their
quest, are bent on concretizing the merger in March and approach the
INEC for ratification or registration.
Most of the interested opposition parties have named their contact committees.
Senator Chris Ngige (ACN, Anambra central) said at the end of the day, Nigerians would know that the progressives mean business.
“The progressives led by ACN were already meeting with others such as
the Labour Party, LP, ANPP, APGA and DPP for the purpose of forming the
mega party. By a kind of metamorphosis, the affected political parties
which have radical politicians in their rank and file would do
everything possible to ensure the growth of democracy in the country.
Fourteen years after the emergence of the present democracy, it is
obvious that nothing good can come out of PDP and that is why we are
determined that by the first quarter of this year, Nigerians will see
that progressives mean business,” he said.
Indeed, a leading member of ANPP’s contact committee, Senator Bukar
Abba Ibrahim said recently that the opposition parties were working hard
to present the new party in March.
“Before March 2013, we are all going to reach an accord on this
merger; that is the deadline for the coalition materialising. From all
indications, the parties are looking forward to forming a totally new
party where all the opposition parties will come together as one
entity,” he said.
To ensure that the merger works, prominent leaders, who are seen as
the faces of the various parties and whose interests had hampered the
coalition in the past are not part of the negotiations. For instance,
the CPC committee is to be headed by a former Deputy Governor of Bauchi
State, Alhaji Garba Gadi. He is replacing former Head of State, Major
General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd) the party’s national leader.
INEC hurdle
However, opposition parties considering a merger must meet the
conditions stipulated in the 1999 Constitution and the Electoral Act
2010 before they can be registered as a new party.
Chief Press Secretary to the INEC Chairman, Mr. Kayode Idowu,
reportedly said that to be able allowed to field candidates, the party
has to be in the INEC register before the
He said: “The constitution has stated clearly how parties should be
registered. The law also provides for when INEC must serve notice of
elections. Section 25 of the Electoral Act says INEC should issue a
notice of election 90 days before an election. If a political party is
to participate in an election, the party has to be on INEC’s register
before INEC issues such notice. If a party is not on INEC’s register by
the time the commission issues a notice, such political party cannot
contest in that same election.”
This time, merger will work — ANPP
One of the major forces in the merger talks, the All Nigeria Peoples
Party yesterday told Vanguard that political parties involved in the
talks had strongly resolved to ensure that the merger for a mega
political party was achieved because they were all determined and
serious to succeed based on the level of their discussions to give the
Nigerian people a new era of democratic rule in 2015
Secretary, ANPP National Rebuilding and Inter Party Contact
Committee, Dr. George Moghalu said that the committee is out to
represent the ANPP in the merger talks with the ACN and CPC to form a
mega platform to dethrone PDP in 2015.
Moghalu said the opposition parties were strategically planning to
exhaust democratic avenues to technically knock out PDP because of the
enough time they have to resolve a lot of issues and come to a
compromise.
According to him, insinuations about crisis in the merger talks
concerning logo, candidate and manifesto are not true; rather the
parties are making progress and will come to a logical conclusion to
have a mega political platform for the 2015 general election.
Moghalu said: “There is a determination by all groups that we must
succeed in the merger talks. As we talk about merger, names, logos must
be dropped, and adopt new name and logo acceptable to all groups, and
they are not issues, because it is not contentious. The question is
whether there is willingness, commitment by the negotiating parties to
build a strong political platform, and the time for talks.
“The answer is yes. It is not like the talks we had in the past, this
one is clear, and what we are doing is to concretise all our
discussions with a view of what will be beneficial to the Nigerian
nation. But those who may not believe in the process or are scared of
the process and consequences of a successful outing of our mega
political platform are talking otherwise.
“The beauty of democracy is the ability to have choices, and I think
that the average Nigerian would want to have very clear demarcation as
to the parties to deal with. The truth is that the support base of my
party (ANPP) is massive, and we have very solid support at the
grassroots. Now there is a new consciousness, and what we are doing is
to begin the reawakening of our supporters, and the same thing applies
to other participating opposition parties. If all these parties (CPC,
ACN, APGA, LP and others) come to form a mega political platform you
will know that they are into a serious contest.”
However, Moghalu said there is no candidate yet to be the flag-bearer
for the presidential contest in 2015 elections, but the opposition
parties are working assiduously to have an all encompassing democratic
mega party where people will test their popularity, and any candidate
the people want will be supported.
“We are not working with anybody in mind rather we are coming up with
a mega political platform that will be democratic for anybody to
contest within. We will welcome anybody that wants to test his or her
popularity. In our democracy there is no enough internal democracy in
our political structure, but we want to create a political platform that
will be democratic in all facets,” Moghalu stressed.
On the conduct of the of the 2015 elections, Moghalu urged the INEC
to ensure from now that they conduct free and fair elections that would
be acceptable to all.
Vanguard
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