Facts have emerged about how former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s inspired Coalition for Nigeria Movement (CNM) and the Nigeria Intervention Movement (NIM) disagreed over the adoption of the Africa Democratic Congress (ADC) as the political party to unite all the groups angling to unseat President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019.
A source from NIM told BusinessDay on condition of anonymity that the movement was not comfortable with the final details leading to the adoption of the ADC, which recently absorbed the CNM. The source added that NIM was taken unawares by the arrangement and had to pull out of a meeting called for that purpose because toeing that line would appear as a betrayal of NIM’s 35 political party allies without their consent.
“NIM went on courtesy call on Obasanjo but it did not work out because our people did not accept the idea of ADC as the platform because we also want to give other parties we have alliance with an opportunity and also to be fair to them,” the source said.
The source noted that following this development, NIM set up a seven-man committee to adopt one party as the final platform from the about 35 parties in its alliance, which as at Thursday May 17, had been narrowed down to three. Although the source did not name the three parties, BusinessDay gathered that the most favoured are the Action Democratic Party, ADP, the United Progressives Party, UPP, and the Labour Party, LP.
Series of meeting are still being held to adopt a final political party in the coming days just as a faction of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and another faction of the main opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) including the Social Democratic Party (SDP) are also said to be in advanced talks with NIM to boost the chances of the coming “Grand Coalition,” the source said.
Speaking to BusinessDay after one of the meetings on Thursday in Abuja, a member of the Steering and Adoption Committee, Elishama Ideh, said “we have gone very far, we have been screening different political parties and we are viewing the ideals of the different parties that will form the basis of exactly what we want in a new Nigeria.
“Today is the final day of selection and we have zeroed down on three political parties, but we have not made a final decision on which one. The leaders of the adoption team will meet again to take a decision on which party we would adopt for better Nigeria,” she said.
She stressed that what matters most to Nigerians now is not empty promises reminiscent of the APC during the 2015 elections but to get any of the parties that is “open to new a Nigeria with new faces in the political arena in 2019. People that have the capacity to be able to run for different offices and have all it takes to deliver to Nigerians what they are looking for. We must have the same ideal and new Nigerian objectives.”
On the strength of the NIM in terms of structures, Ideh, who is also a presidential aspirant, said “we have the structures across the nation and in the Diaspora. We want to move away from just talking and campaigning for votes and promising Nigerians what we cannot do. We want to put up a manifesto that will be achievable and sustainable because what the previous parties were doing was making promises on things they can’t achieve.”
She lamented the deplorable economic situation in the country but assured that NIM is putting competent heads together to look into the various sectors of the economy of the nation and putting idea and people that have the knowledge to make all the sectors work in a sustainable and realistic ways devoid of empty promises.
On whether the coalition would not be another APC, which is allegedly fracturing over some discrepancies, a director of Organisation and Operation in NIM, Khairat Animasheun, said “what made APC become APC was the merger and in the merger all the parties submitted their individual certificates and lost their identities.
“But before doing that the APC did not sit down to agree on who does what and the terms of execution of their manifesto. So they have been strange bedfellows in the same cocoon and that is the reason they have not been able to work together and that has affected the governance in Nigeria.
“So, we don’t want to make the same error. In the conversation we are having with parties, we want them to still maintain their identities and to agree on certain fundamental issues. We are looking at the structures of the parties and their reach and we are bringing others into the melting pot to give Nigeria a focused leadership in 2019,” she added.
