ACN: no alliance with CPC

There is no alliance between the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) to field a joint candidate in Saturday’s presidential election, AC N National Chairman Chief Bisi Akande said yesterday.

Mallam Nuhu Ribadu of the ACN and Gen. Muhammadu Buhari of the CPC will contest individually, the party said at a news conference in Abuja.

Both parties had been engaged in talks for a pact after the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) retained its dominance of National Assembly in last Saturday’s elections.

It appeared the talks would succeed on Tuesday night, but they collapsed early yesterday.

The ACN also ruled out any alliance with the PDP or sympathy votes for President Goodluck Jonathan, its candidate.

The party said it could not work with Jonathan because of the company he keeps.

ACN Chairman Chief Bisi Akande made the clarifications at a briefing at the party’s National Secretariat in Abuja against the backdrop of conflicting information on the state of the resumed talks between the ACN and the CPC.

Akande said: “The ACN wishes to inform all its teeming supporters as well as all Nigerians that there is no alliance between the party and the CPC ahead of Saturday’s presidential election.

“While it is true that representatives of both parties have engaged in talks aimed at forging an alliance that could dislodge the PDP, the clueless party that has frittered away the huge opportunities that could have transformed our great country in the past 12 years, we regret to announce that such talks have not led to any alliance.

“As a party that believes in democratic values, we have therefore decided that in the overall interest of the two parties involved, our democracy as well as our country, it is better for each of the parties to go into the presidential election on its own platform.

“If at the end of the election on Saturday there is no clear winner, we will make a decision on which way to go, in the overriding interest of all Nigerians.”

Akande blamed CPC, especially its presidential candidate, Gen. Buhari for the failed talks.

He said: “We started talking to Buhari since 2005. And we have always initiated the talks but it never resulted in any alliance before the electioneering started.

But spokesman for the CPC candidate, Mr. Yinka Odumakin, said the party would not take-up issues with the AC N.

He said: “We will not engage in any reckless comment. We don’t want to jeopadise the possibility of forging an accord to free our people from the bondage of the PDP.”

Akande said: “We had to go and elect a presidential candidate at the primary. After that, we felt we could still have an alliance and possibly withdraw from the presidential election and support Gen. Buhari. But the talks seemed to have been frustrated, at least not by us.

“During the electioneering, we agreed that our presidential candidate should continue to talk with them. We were surprised that it led to no alliance.

“When we waited and the CPC did not reach out to us, we decided to move close to them so that we could view the discussions.

“And I’m grateful to some patriots who tried to midwife the coming together all the while again. Until 12.30 am yesterday, we never started any talk, but we decided on the preliminary, hoping to meet again.

“The party beckoned on us to come and talk with the CPC, we jumped at it because we loved it. We have been in Abuja since Monday for the dialogue.

“We want the alliance to be conditional; working together as one party because we believe our ideology and the leadership can work together. But we don’t know what happened at the other end.

“We were unable to speak with the CPC leadership, until 12 am yesterday and we had some preliminaries and we thought that certain things ought to have been done before 11am and when we waited till 1.00 am, we did not see any response, I started coming to this office.”

Asked of the feeling of the CPC to the talks, Akande said: “We are not interested in it. We don’t know what happened at the other end. I don’t know about CPC but I know a lot about my party. We are anxious to work with the CPC but they are not responding accordingly.”

Akande was asked whether ACN’s insistence on the adoption of its presidential candidate, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, accounted for the deadlock, he replied: “We have never said such thing to anybody. We have only expressed our anxiety to work with the CPC and we are still very anxious to work with them.

“The only thing we are talking about now is that Saturday is very close and if it is technically going to be difficult for us to work together between now and Saturday, a discussion that has not started by now may not result to anything tangible. It will never end until Friday.

“But in our own opinion, we cannot keep waiting; the election is coming on Saturday…So, we need to get our people to move to the field to start mobilising for the election and not for the alliance negotiation, which has not started.”

Pressed to speak on what ACN would do if the CPC makes a U-turn to go for the alliance, he said: “We will insist that things be done according to our performance in the last election. But we are ready to concede anything.”

Akande said President Jonathan had been sending emissaries to the AC N, but ruled out any alliance between the PDP and the ACN.

He also denied that ACN leader Asiwaju Bola Tinubu had visited the President.

He said: “It is not true that Tinubu went with any PDP or presidential delegation. He never even visited the President yesterday (Tuesday). He never visited the President on Monday. I have been with him since Monday. And we have been at meetings together since Monday.

“And we have been pursuing the possibility of this alliance since Monday together. So that is not true.

“Since last Saturday’s election, the President has opened discussions with us. He has been sending our friends to us. He has been sending traditional rulers to us.

“It is difficult for us to accept the reach-out of Mr. President because of the company he keeps in the PDP. As a person, we respect his efforts. We appreciate his reach out but because he belongs to the PDP, there is nothing we can do about it because it will not be convenient for us to ask our supporters to vote for PDP.

“The AC N never discussed the details of coming together. We never believed in the Government of National Unity. We believe in proper collaboration. We believe it was not possible for the AC N to go into a merger with the PDP. There is an ideological barrier between the AC N and the PDP.

“But we are attracted to the ideology of the CPC and we have respect for its leadership and we want to work with them. We have been pursuing the possibility of dealing with them. And if it is possible, we shall still work with them. We shall have an alliance with them; we shall have a merger with them.

“It is because the CPC has not been reaching out to us and we don’t want it to appear as if we are not confident in ourselves.”

Akande also spoke on the party’s evaluation of last Saturday’s National Assembly elections.

He said: “There were lots of manipulations. There was bribery and corruption. There was overuse of money by PDP. There was overzealousness from the security agents. They were induced with money.

“You could see the overzealousness on our candidate in Akwa Ibom. He was arrested for treason and the High Court in Abuja said there was no evidence and he was re-arrested and was taken to Akwa Ibom to face a Magistrate’s Court to get him detained, until after the elections, until the High Court asked him to be released again.

“The overzealousness of the security agents under Inspector-General of Police Hafiz Ringim seems to have given credence to the general opinion that the election was being manipulated to outwit the opposition.”