AS
the emergence, on the streets of Abuja, of President Goodluck Jonathan’s
posters for the 2015 election continues to generate comments and controversies,
a political group, Concerned Arewa Patriots (CAP), believing that the
President may have clandestinely flagged off his campaign, has vowed to
mobilise Northerners to beat him in the elections.
The
group has, therefore, called on northerners to unite and support the move “to
chase him out of the Villa through election.”
This is
just as the Conference of Political Parties (CNPP) has urged the Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP) to give Nigerians a break, saying it has become obvious
that the President is running for a second term.
In a
statement signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Osita Okechukwu, the
CNPP said: “All we demand is that there should be free, fair and transparent
elections in 2015; most importantly, that the President should not either
covertly or overtly use his high office to manipulate the electoral process.”
The
convener and pioneer national leader of the group, Mallam Maiyaki Idris, said
in Kaduna yesterday that to “be able to appreciate the path to lead to our
goals of unity and sustainable development, we have set out machinery on course
to fish out the very best of our own, to seek for and pursue the prime position
of Presidency come 2015, to broker the peace and security of the nation, which
has been in crisis for some time now.
“We
make this humble appeal as an initiative for all agencies of the North to begin
to consider, in order to generate our total cooperation and support for our
consensus candidate come 2015,” he said.
Idris
argued that although Jonathan could contest for the Presidency, the incumbency
factor should not discourage the North from fielding a consensus candidate for
the position, alleging that the North had suffered a lot under the current
dispensation.
He
said: “My own religion believes that power belongs to Almighty Allah and Allah
gives it to whosoever He wishes and He can take it at any moment…”
Several
northern leaders have lately been holding political meetings and speaking about
plans to produce a presidential material to wrestle power from Jonathan, if he
decides to vie for the 2015 Presidency.
Said
Idris: “God will still give power to who He wants, but God helps those who help
themselves…
“What
we are saying here now is that we should help ourselves… that somebody is an
incumbent does not mean that automatically he has won the Presidency and that
is what we are talking about.
“There
must be election and rigging cannot succeed without our cooperation. We are the
ones they give money to go and then they rig and get away.
“But if
we say this time around we are not taking it, it has to be an election and if
that level of awareness is created in the North, believe me we will win that
election with the backing of Almighty Allah, because God created all of us and
He has blessed us and not one particular individual…
“So,
the issue of conceding to somebody is a weakness and it demoralises people.”
He
added: “2015 is precious to us and we are seeing what is actually
against us… It is a bitter lesson for us to accept what we are doing now.
“North
ought to hold political power, but the North now is nothing in Nigeria. The
economic power is the West, whether you like it or not. Take the statistics of
the banks in this country, the financial houses, the corporate organizations;
tell me who manages and who owns them.
“The
commercial activities in this country are in the East. In my own local village,
we have energetic boys, but even if it is anything, it is from the Igboman that
I get it.
“We
Northerners have come to a stage where we should sit down and reason and work
as one, irrespective of religion or tribe.”
CNPP
said it was only concerned with the protection of the inalienable right of
Nigerians to elect leaders of their choice in 2015.
According
to the statement: “We are least concerned about who becomes the presidential
candidate of PDP and therefore the intra-party power tussle should not pollute
our political landscape.
“For
those who engage in a do-or-die battle to capture the PDP presidential ticket
and rate it as election before the election, we advise they come out of such
mundane thought, as the granite merger of the ACN, CPC, ANPP and other
progressive forces will wipe out such hang-over.”
CNPP
also demands the implementation of the core recommendations of the Uwais
Electoral Reform Committee Report, alleging the Prof. Attahiru Jega-led
Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was requesting for dictatorial
powers to disqualify candidates, to muscle the opposition and cancel elections
arbitrarily.
Source: Guardian
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