Tinubu’s Lecture Stokes Crisis Between ACN And CPC. Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu’s comments during a lecture at the Chatham House, London, recently, where he endorsed the election of President Goodluck Jonathan seems to be earning him more foes than friends especially from the CPC, which has accused the ACN chieftain of being a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) agent. STANLEY NKWOCHA reports the rift.    While delivering a lecture at the Chattam House in London recently, Action Congress of Nigeria chieftain, Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu, told the world that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Goodluck Jonathan, won the last presidential election in Nigeria. This declaration came after the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, presidential candidate, Gen Muhammadu Buhari and some of his supporters were at the same venue earlier to give the part account of what happened during the said elections. Buhari had submitted that the elections were rigged by the ruling party.   In his mild submission, Tinubu said though results allocated to the PDP’s flag bearer to a large extent were doubtful in some areas, he was convinced that Jonathan won the election.   “I believe Jonathan won the election but that the returns attributed to him in some parts of the country obviously appeared exaggerated.” Tinubu, attributed Jonathan’s victory to the “unique circumstances of Jonathan’s rise to power” which made the public to see him “as a distinctive figure.”   Since making the submissions, the banters being thrown at the ACN chieftain has known no bound. Tinubu, who at a point contemplated becoming a running mate to Buhari, and who said that the candidate of his own party, Ribadu, was a Sarkozy, a Cameron and an Obama rolled into one, is in the middle of thick jabs.   Tinubu, had blamed the ‘weak’ campaign of the opposition for their defeat, saying that they naively thought that the public’s disenchantment with the PDP “was enough to get rid of them at the polls. He took a swipe at “a group of people dissatisfied with the outcome of the general elections,” who through their “political machinations” are worsening the security situation in the country, referring particularly to the Boko Haram menace. He then pledged his “‘full sympathy and support’ for the president in finding solution to the disturbing phenomenon.”   Commenting on the incident recently, Uchenna Osigwe, apparently a staunch supporter of Buhari, wondered what could have led Tinubu into making such assertions. He alluded that Tinubu’s outburst might not be unconnected with his frustrations at the collapse of the CPC/ACN merger.   Said Osigwe: “Anybody who had followed Tinubu’s words and actions during the so-called alliance talks with Buhari’s CPC would not be very surprised at what Tinubu told the world in London. While Buhari consistently held out hope for a possible alliance, or at the very least, a working plan with the ACN, Tinubu had from the very beginning—once his request to be Buhari’s running mate was rejected by the latter on the grounds that it would be a Muslim- Muslim ticket, which, given the situation in the country, would be doomed. “In Tinubu’s words in the same report, ‘the opposition parties danced with each other but did not embrace’. Buhari, on the other hand, called for what he described as a ‘political maturity’ from both parties, who are in a way ideological soul mates, in order to dislodge the PDP. So, while Buhari was holding out hope for a workable alliance, Tinubu had gone to town to rule out any such alliance,” Osigwe fumed.   Tracing the history of the failed merger bid, Osigwe said it was regrettable that after the ACN had failed to live up to its side of the bargain, it was now blaming and churning out its frustrations on the CPC and its presidential candidate. He inferred that the party was never serious at working out a merger in the first place. Osigwe continued: “Campaigning in Kano on the 22nd of March 2011for his presidential candidate, namely Nuhu Ribadu, whom he compared to Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy of USA, UK and France respectively, Tinubu declared that the CPC was parading ‘expired leadership.’ Juxtaposed to what he said in his Chatham House ‘lecture,’ to the effect that the insecurity in the country was caused by the political machinations of a group who were not happy with the outcome of the general elections, you have a good idea of who Tinubu was referring to. There was undoubtedly a question of good faith in the alliance talks.   “Initially, when Buhari refused to run under ACN, again for good reasons, they agreed that the CPC would provide the presidential candidate while the ACN would provide the running mate. CPC was the first to ratify their presidential candidate and instead of ACN respecting their agreement, they went ahead and produced a presidential candidate. From that point on, the alliance was as good as dead. Again, Tinubu coming out to insist on being the running mate to Buhari, according to CPC sources, makes it clear that the party wasn’t serious about a workable alliance in the first place.”   As if the defence above wasn’t enough, the writer posited that Tinubu was used to frustrate the merger, adding that the PDP had made it a point of duty to always send agents after Buhari each time he decided to contest the presidential election.   “One of the revelations that came out in the run up to the April 2011 presidential elections in Nigeria was the allegation the former governor of Sokoto state, Attahiru Bafarawa levelled against Tinubu, accusing the latter of being a PDP agent whose brief was to frustrate any alliance with Buhari’s CPC. But Tinubu was the first to make the allegation that there were PDP agents planted to frustrate the alliance, whereupon Bafarawa told him he might have to look in the mirror to recognize one such agent! Was Tinubu’s insistence on being Buhari’s running mate part of the plan to frustrate the alliance talks?” “There’s a pattern here: each time Buhari comes out to contest, the PDP sends their agents after him, possibly making one of those agents his running mate. They failed in 2003 because his running mate, Chuba Okadigbo, stood firmly with him, but that cost him his life. That game was again attempted in 2011.   “Since they couldn’t plant someone close enough, his running mate, Pastor Tunde Bakare, was smart enough to understand that those same agents were trying to trick him into signing a post-dated letter of resignation. In other words, they wanted to blackmail him in advance and, through that, weaken Buhari once again. Currently there is a serious effort to divide the ranks of the CPC by creating ‘factions’ in the party,” Osigwe harped.   While attempts to get the National Publicity Secretary of the ACN, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, to comment on the issue failed, an ACN chieftain who preferred anonymity, dismissed Osigwe’s submission, describing it as a “macabre dance meant to impress the courts”.   The chieftain said that the party owed no one apologies as to the best of its knowledge, the submissions of Tinubu was done without bias and clearly was devoid of hatred for any particular party or individual. He said it was about time the CPC tolerated the views of other political parties and took itself from the ‘cocoon of political hallucination’.   For the ACN and CPC – the leading opposition parties in the country, it is back to the trenches of political rivalry that is clearly self induced and created. Is this the beginning of an opposition clocked against itself? While the PDP seems to be smiling all the way, for the opposition, it may be a long walk down the brink. Perhaps the quest for power retrieval is a million miles away.