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 thatthe President may have clandestinely flagged off his
campaign, has vowed to mobilise Northerners to beathim in the elections.
The group has, therefore, called on northerners to unite and support the move “to chase him out of the Villathrough election.”
This
is just as the Conference of Political Parties (CNPP) has urged
thePeoples Democratic Party (PDP) to give Nigerians a break, saying it
has become obvious that the President isrunning for a second term.
In
a statement signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Osita
Okechukwu, the CNPP said: “All we demand isthat 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 ourown, to seek for and pursuethe 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 allagencies 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
notdiscourage 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
ifthat level of awareness is created in the North, believeme 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 politicalpower, 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 cometo a stage where we should sit down and reason and work as one, irrespective ofreligion 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 PDPand 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 beforethe election, we advise they come out of such mundane
thought, as the granite merger of the ACN, CPC, ANPP and other
progressiveforces 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.
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