Maj.-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari
The Action Congress of Nigeria has confirmed it is in alliance talks with the Maj.- Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.)-led Congress of Progressive Change.
If an agreement materialises, both parties will present common candidates for presidential, governorship and other positions during the 2011 general elections.
The party’s Chairman, Convention and Congress Committee, Dr. Chris Ngige, made this known in Benin, Edo State, on Friday.
Ngige, who is also a former governor of Anambra State, said that the All Nigerian Peoples Party, the All Progressives Grand Alliance and a faction of Democratic Peoples Party led by an ex-governor of Sokoto State, Attahiru Bafarawa, had contacted the ACN for a similar agreement.
Although Ngige confirmed that nothing concrete was yet to come out of the talks, he explained that the primary reason for the parties seeking to work together was to dislodge the Peoples Democratic Party from power.
He said, “Buhari of late has met to have an alliance with us to present common candidates for election for the office of president, governorship and others in the election but nothing is concrete yet.
“Chief Ogbonna Onu of the ANPP recently was in a meeting with us, and Chekwas Okorie and Victor Umeh, both factional leaders of APGA came too.
“There is no way progressives will not join hands to drive the PDP out of power because the party is peopled by tyrannical individuals. If people don’t come to us through the door, they will come through the window.”
Recalling how the issue of alliance came up again in the present dispensation, Ngige said, “We started it (alliance) to present a unified opposition to the PDP.
“The National Democratic Movement was formed about five months ago. Buhari, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, Bafarawa, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, I and others started it. When we began, Chief Olu Falae, Chief Tom Ikimi and others were part of it but as you know, in politics there is only permanent interest, and some went their way.
“Buhari went to form the CPC, Atiku went back to the PDP, Bafarawa remained with us, while ACN was formed to actualise the new vision.”
Meanwhile, the ACN on Sunday alerted Nigerians to what it described as ‘surreptitious and dangerous moves by some agents of evil’ to silence a former Lagos State Governor, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.
Although the party did not name the ‘agents of evil’, it claimed that they intended to use the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to carry out one of their two-pronged plans.
The second plot, it added in a statement on Sunday by its National Publicity Secretary, involved compromising Tinubu’s ‘security in order to expose his life to danger’ in a manner a former Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice Chief Bola Ige, was killed in 2001.
According to the ACN, the goal of the agents of evil, is to put away the former governor, whom it described as the ‘champion of progressive politics’ and to stop the ‘progressive train that is blitzing its way through the South-West in particular and the nation in general.”
It said that it was aware that President Goodluck Jonathan, was under pressure to use the EFCC to frame up the former governor ‘under spurious charges to put him out of circulation.’
The party warned that Nigerians were very discerning and would easily recognise when an innocent man, was being framed.
The statement reads in part, ‘‘We are aware that President Goodluck Jonathan, who hitherto has resisted every pressure to use his office to influence the judiciary in favour of his party, has been under tremendous pressure to, in turn put pressure on the EFCC to frame up Tinubu under spurious charges to put him out of circulation, thus empowering those who know they cannot win free and fair elections ahead of the 2011 poll.
‘‘The proponents of this plan argue that former President Olusegun Obasanjo successfully used the EFCC to hound his perceived opponents and to ruin their chances just before the 2007 general elections, thus paving the way for his party to have a field day in ruining the elections and awarding victories to those that caught its fancy.
‘‘If President Jonathan continues to allow himself to be guided by the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, which he has pledged to uphold and defend, then those putting pressure on him have also mapped out a fallback position, under which they intend to infiltrate Tinubu’s security and expose his life to mortal danger.
‘‘The days of anarchy, when innocent people were slammed with spurious charges to satisfy the egotistic penchant of a megalomaniac, are gone.‘‘
The ACN said that it was optimistic that the plan to expose Tinubu’s life to danger would fail.
“‘The life of any human being, including Asiwaju‘s, is in the hands of God. As we have always warned, human life is so sacred that no one should do anything to take it. That has been and remains our stand,‘‘ the party said.
SOURCE:/www.punchng.com
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