The Coalition of Nigeria Movement (CNM), the much touted “Third Force’’ inspired by former President Olusegun Obasanjo after some uncertainties, eventually emerged into the Africa Democratic Congress (ADC) on Wednesday May 9.
The party is also said to have perfected plans to shop for a suitable presidential candidate, who has the clout and popularity that will unseat President Muhammadu Buhari and his All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2019 elections.
Obasanjo’s ally, Olagunsoye Oyinlola, who made this announcement in Abuja, said the CNM resolved that with the understanding of like-minded persons and organisations across the country, “Nigeria will be rescued, and that the elections of 2019 will be used to cure the curse and afflictions of failed leadership and perpetual underdevelopment.”
He said the decision to move in to ADC was anchored on the progressive character of the party and its integrity within Nigeria’s political space. The former military administrator of Lagos state, who bemoaned the worsening state of things in the country, said “We have said it before and we are stating it here again that the current state of despair and despondency in our dear country is an ill wind.
“It is foreboding and can only lead to a conflagration. Between
January when CNM was formed and now, can we say that the story of Nigeria has changed for the better? Have things not worsened at all levels? He further said that it was the determination of the movement to prevent chaos in Nigeria that it wants to change the leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC)- led by Muhammadu Buhari.
The ADC may receive further boost in the coming months, especially now that the APC appears to be in disarray as some of the its aggrieved members who were part of the legacy parties that formed the APC coalition – the New PDP, appear set to tear the APC further apart with their 7-day ultimatum to the ruling party to respond to their grievances.
National Secretary of the ADC, Said Baba Abdullahi, told BusinessDay on Thursday that the party would serve as the platform through which all other coalition forces would align to unseat President Muhammadu Buhari and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2019 general elections, adding that Nigerians are tired of the Buhari government.
Former President Obasanjo, who is the arrowhead of the anti- Buhari forces, had on January 23, sent a letter to President Buhari and advised him not to run in 2019 and give way for younger people. But Buhari on April 9 declared his interest to seek reelection.
Obasanjo has since remained vehement in his opposition to Buhari’s quest for reelection over what he claimed were the dangers of allowing President Buhari to continue in office beyond 2019. He had warned Nigerians to reject Buhari as he has allegedly failed serially and even further divided Nigerians along ethnic, regional and religious lines.
On Wednesday May 2, Obasanjo, through his media representative, Kehinde Adeyemi, took a swipe at Buhari once again, saying that Buhari and his supporters peddle lies that Obasanjo now supports Buhari to launder his allegedly battered image to the Nigerian public and make him appear good before Nigerians.
“It has come to the attention of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo that some elements in the Muhammadu Buhari camp and support group are desperate to secure a second term, fair or foul. In this desperation, everything is fair, including telling libelous lies against persons and institutions, instead of addressing the fundamental issues of statecraft and economic management.
“In the last 24 hours the internet has been bombarded with deliberate falsehoods aimed at hoodwinking unsuspecting Nigerians to believe that Obasanjo has now supported Buhari for his second term because of some perceived Buhari’s ‘superlative’ performance in his encounter with Trump during his visit to the White House in Washington DC.
“In another breadth, these blackmailers insinuated that Chief Obasanjo met with some Nigeria Labour Congress leaders in his house in Abuja on Workers’ Day. What a pathetic fallacy! Chief Obasanjo never met any Labour man or woman on May 1, 2018 to make any supposed volte face to support Buhari. Furthermore, neither was Chief Obasanjo in Abuja on
that date nor does he own a house in Abuja. Any time he visits Abuja, he usually stays in a Guest House or hotel.
“For the record, Obasanjo has not and cannot endorse failure. His position remains as stated in his January 23rd, 2018 statement on the state of the nation. Chief Obasanjo sympathises with the plight of those campaigners and supporters of Buhari. He doesn’t believe dishing out fake news that can only be believed by imbeciles will turn black
into white,” the statement added.
But reacting to this development, a newspaper columnist and a public affairs analyst, Majeed Dahiru, told BusinessDay on Friday, that idea of Third Force was good but disagreed that it should melt into a political party. “I don’t think the Third Force should be confined to a political party, I was thinking it is an idea whose time has come to revolutionise our politicking in Nigeria. I thought it was a template for doing things differently from the politicians that have failed us.
I thought they could mobilise Nigerians away from primordial sentiment of ethnicity and religious bigotry and teach Nigerians how to align their democratic choices with their individual economy.
“They have not been able to articulate that difference and I am still not convinced that they have a clear cut alternative on issue- based politics within the political space. There is nothing fundamentally different between the ADC, the APC and the PDP. The ADC may have the chance to unseat Buhari but they are at best a coming together of political big wigs for the purpose of getting power and when they get power they are likely to do the same thing from those they took over from,” he lamented.
In is reaction, Ernest Ereke, a senior lecturer of the Department of Political Science University of Abuja said the ADC has nothing new to offer because it will most certainly to be peopled by the old politicians who have ruined the nation before.
“The ADC will not be peopled by those with fresh ideas or fresh
people. It is going to be the same people who have failed in the past that will still move to the ADC, the same politicians who undermined democratic and governance system in the country, so it is not a new direction. We saw it in 2013 when people moved from CPC, APGA, A.C.N, and PDP to set up the APC and really nothing has changed apart from the regime but the failure of governance the failure of state have continued,” he said.
When asked if the nation still has options to change the face of
politics, he said “we are not helpless but the fault is that we have always allowed the same people to hijack the space through our complacency. We have the number and we have very good reasons to be angry and change the system. We must create the awareness, Nigerians have so many options, we know those that are capable of delivering but we must avoid the sentiments of religion and ethnicity. Nigerians must be educated to make informed choices.”
The ADC may be the new darling of Nigerian politicians, who
BusinessDay gathered are already plotting to join the party but how far the party can go remains within the bowels of time.
