Posted by From JACOB EDI, Abuja on
The National Executive Committee (NEC) of the Action Congress (AC) Wednesday began a crucial meeting to take a definite stand on whether the party will participate in Saturday's presidential and National Assembly polls.
The National Executive Committee (NEC) of the Action Congress (AC) Wednesday began a crucial meeting to take a definite stand on whether the party will participate in Saturday's presidential and National Assembly polls.
The AC and other opposition parties had been engaged in talks for three days running on whether or not to boycott Saturday's polls.
But National Chairman of the party, Chief Bisi Akande stopped short of announcing the party would pull out of Saturday's elections when he declared that the party had no confidence in the Independent National Electoral Commission, the security agencies and President Olusegun Obasanjo to conduct free and fair elections.
Chief Akande accused President Obasanjo of deliberately causing confusion in the polity to justify a state of emergency which he wanted to declare and then prolong his stay in power. In this direction, the AC chairman said the president was trying to compromise the military by buying vehicles for officers.
Obasanjo's plan, according to Akande, is to summon the National Assembly back to session to ratify the state of emergency and thereafter amend the constitution to allow him rule the country for life.
"There can be no free and fair elections under General Obasanjo, and this has been demonstrated not just during the last polls but back in 2003.
The fact that he got away with the impunity of the past has emboldened him to take a bolder step toward the precipice, and we must stop him now! Nothing good can ever come out of INEC as presently constituted. We do not believe that INEC can conduct credible election on Saturday. It seems to have been programmed by the Presidency and the PDP to fail the Nigerian people and kill this democracy," Chief Akande stated in a statement, entitled "Towards a one-party dictatorship."
According to Akande, President Obasanjo had a long history of love and passion for a one party state and that both the president and the PDP "appear hell-bent on foisting themselves on an unwilling populace by conducting the most fraudulent elections ever in the nation's history." He added that the crisis that attended last Saturday's elections and the declaration of curfew in some states was the first time since 1964.
He said right from 1999, when Obasanjo began to instigate the change in the leadership of the National Assembly, encouraging factionalization in other political parties, decentralizing labour, sacking the leadership of PDP at the time and scaring away all the progressives within the party, embarking on an unnecessary registration, his third term moves and trying to scuttle Atiku's presidential ambition up to last Saturday's rigging, it was clear that Obasanjo was working towards a one-party state.
"General Obasanjo is likely to take further steps to worsen the crisis so that it would be unmanageable. He would then use it as a ploy to justify such a declaration and try to recall the National Assembly to ratify it knowing full well that most of the members would be busy with their re-election efforts. Under the cover of the state of emergency he would then unilaterally amend the constitution to enable him to rule for life," Akande stated.
"The scenario we have painted above may seem far-fetched, but that will be only to those who have not followed the president's antecedents. Gen. Obasanjo is a firm believer in a one-party state, and he has canvassed this in his writings through the years.
"He even once sent a delegation to Egypt to understudy the workings of a one-party state, even though that country has started opening up to multi-party democracy. For him, it is either a one-party dictatorship or a military rule! He has said that the word "opposition" does not exist in his own limited understanding of African traditional politics. "Opposition, he declared to our horror, is the same as enmity," Akande said while calling on Nigerians to resist such move.
But he said the AC is resolved to stop any attempt to truncate the Nigerian project through legal means. He also advised other political parties not to be carried away by the allocation of a few seats or states because "those who emerged through such a deeply flawed process lack legitimacy."
While praising the judiciary for its role in protecting democracy through its pronouncements the AC boss berated the ruling PDP and INEC for working tirelessly to truncate democracy. "Dictatorship always thrives where national institutions are weak and fragile and where they lack the courage to do the right thing," Akande emphasised.
The AC chairman cursed that the blood of all those that died as a result of the crisis that followed Saturday's governorship will be on the "hands of those who orchestrated their deaths through the daylight robbery that replaced a much-anticipated election."
AC chieftains at the press conference include Vice President Atiku Abubakar, Senator Peter Obi, Chief Audu Ogbe, Chief Tom Ikimi, Bashir Dalhatu, Adams Oshiomhole and Titi Ajanaku.