The Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) is crying foul over what it alleges to be a sinister plot by the Presidency and agents of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to frustrate the emergence of the All Progressives Congress (APC), opposition merger, citing a presidential directive that all efforts to that effect should be “frustrated”; including preventing ACN chairman, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu from emerging as the single opposition candidate for the 2015 elections.
In a statement issued on Tuesday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party alleged that there are plans by the government to ensure that elections either did not hold in 2015 or that it will hold under curfew by instigating violence across the country. But the party warned that no presidential directive or executive order can stop the coming together of progressive forces in the country to democratically take power from the do-nothing PDP in 2015.
The media was awashed with reports about a presidential directive that outlined plans to muzzle the opposition come 2015. The directive, PD95 dated March 26, 2013 underscored the importance of sabotaging all business interests of former governor of Lagos state, Bola Tinubu, to create an atmosphere of confusion needed by President Goodluck Jonathan to manipulate his re-election as a situational call to save the nation’s institution from collapse, in the countdown to 2015. Apart from these strategies, there are plans to plant moles in the opposition parties according to the directive.
The presidential directive which placed a 24-hour surveillance on Governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa; Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers; Emmanuel Uduaghan of Delta; Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano, and Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu of Niger for their seeming opposition to the ambition of the president or their interest in the presidential seat.
In the statement by the ACN, the party warned that no presidential directive or executive order can stop the coming together of progressive forces in the country to democratically take power from the do-nothing PDP in 2015.
“No force on earth has ever been able to stop an idea which time has come, which is what the All Progressives’ Congress (APC) represents. It is therefore futile for anyone to embark on such an impossible task,” the statement issued in Lagos by the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said.
“Nigerians are yearning for change. Therefore targeting our leaders won’t help the disappearing behemoth, whose so-called reconciliation efforts have even worsened its plight. Needless to say that every attempt or attack on perceived political opponents by the government and it apparatchiks will be revealed, contested and resisted.
“The leaders of APC know what they are up against and are mindful that the battle ahead may be rough and difficult, yet they are irrevocably committed to establishing a party that will sound the death knell of the bumbling PDP and bring development to Nigeria,” it said.
ACN said it was aware, all along, that all the attempts to derail the registration of the APC, by some impostors who have been loaded down with dirty funds by their ‘ogas at the top’, were masterminded from the seat of power and the highest echelon of the PDP, by those who have totally abandoned governance for dirty politics, even though there are almost two years to go before the next elections.
It described as an eye-opener but not a surprise the reported directive issued by the presidency for everything to be done to frustrate the merger of opposition parties.
ACN recalled that in a statement it issued on January 8, 2013, it alerted the nation of the desperate measures being planned by the PDP-led federal government to discredit and silence key opposition leaders, especially ACN leader Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and his CPC counterpart, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, as well as their political associates.
“The report by the national newspaper confirms what we already knew, including the sinister plan to stop Tinubu ahead of the 2015 elections. We will like to add that part of this plan is to hurt his business interests, scare off most of his business partners and political associates, try to pin some activities of Boko Haram on him and generally go after the leading figures including governors in the APC initiative.
“But there is also another plan, which is to ensure that elections either do not hold in 2015 or that they will hold under curfew. To achieve this, those who have now succumbed to a mortal fear of the APC are stoking the fire of violence across the country, either through incompetent handling of existing crisis or by instigating fresh ones.
“With the North-east and the North-west in the throes of violence, the South-west is their next target in this regard, and we will reveal the full details of their shenanigans in due course,” the party said.
ACN warned, however, that do-or-die politics or violence for whatever reason would not spare anyone, include the instigators, just as constricting the democratic space will eventually stifle democracy.
