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Thirty-nine political parties and associations’ team up to wrestle power from President Muhammadu Buhari who wants a second term in office as Nigerians go to the polls in 2019, while the ruling party is also parading an alliance of 20-party coalition thereby giving an impression that the showdown has started

By Olu Ojewale

THEIR mission is well defined and known to everyone: to ensure that President Muhammadu Buhari and the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, are voted out of power in the 2019 polls. The ambitious project being led by the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, saw the coalition of 39 political parties and associations coming together to sign a memorandum of understanding, MoU, to work together and field a presidential candidate to defeat Buhari at the presidential election.

The parties that came together on Monday, July 9, to sign the MOU are: the PDP; the Action Alliance; Alliance for Democracy; Africa Democratic Party; Action Democratic Party; All Grand Alliance Party; Action Peoples Party and Advanced Congress of Democrats.

Others are Better Nigeria Progressive Party, Democratic Alternative, Democratic Peoples Party, Grand Democratic Party of Nigeria, Green Party of Nigeria, KOWA Party, Labour Party, Mass Action Joint Alliance, and Masses Movement of Nigeria .

The rest are the National Conscience Party, New Generation Party, National Unity Party, Peoples Alliance for National Development and Liberty, Peoples Progressive Party, People for Democratic Change, Providence People’s Congress, Restoration Party of Nigeria, Unity Party of Nigeria, All Grassroots Alliance, National Interest Party, Nigeria Democratic Congress Party,  Progressive Peoples Alliance , and Young Democratic Party, among others.

The R-APC, which is a splinter group within the ruling party, APC led by Buba Galadima, a former ally of Buhari also signed the MoU.

The Nigeria Intervention Movement, another pressure group equally appended its signature to the agreement. All the chairmen of the concerned political parties signed the MoU.

According to the MoU, “The parties shall ensure that the coalition is committed to working together in support of a single presidential candidate to contest the 2019 presidential election to successfully enthrone a true democrat who will salvage the nation from the misrule of the APC government.”

Besides, the coalition said the parties were committed to restructure the country, embrace zoning of political and elective powers to ensure that all sections of the country were carried along in the scheme of things.

The MoU added: “That the parties shall promote acceptable core values for the restructuring of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, secure lives and property, rebuild and redirect our nation’s economy back onto the path of growth, respect human rights and freedoms, protect and uphold the cherished values of democracy and the democratic institutions and generally put right the country which unfortunately has now been dangerously divided along ethnic, religious and tribal lines.

“That the parties shall encourage state alliances among themselves to ensure that the cooperating parties under the grand alliance emerge victorious at the state governorship, state legislature and National Assembly elections.”

National chairmen of the political parties signed the MoU pledging to work together under the Coalition for United Democratic Parties, CUDP, to produce a presidential candidate.

Since signing the MoU, Realnews leant that parties in the coalition have been holding stakeholders’ meeting in various states to enlighten their members on the modalities for the agreement. In an interview with The Punch newspaper published on Wednesday, July 11, Uche Secondus, national chairman of the PDP, said the agreement took them many weeks to prepare and that negotiations were carefully carried out among the parties and their leaders. Hence, he expressed confidence that there was, no way any of the other 38 political parties and associations would renege on the agreement because they had vowed to honour it.

“Now, the president should have received a red card notice and be ready to prepare his handover notes because he is leaving the Presidential Villa come May 29, 2019,” Secondus said in the interview.

Nevertheless, leaders of the CUDP seem to have high hopes about the new found alliance. Basking in the euphoria of the agreement, Ben Obi, a former acting national secretary of the PDP, in his address to the coalition, said that concerned parties and associations chose to come together to salvage the nation and put an end to what he called nepotism and tribalism.

He said that the Buhari administration had left Nigerians more divided than they were in 2015, a trend he said must be corrected before it got worse.

He pointed out that the ruling party promised to tackle corruption, revamp the economy and address security challenges and restructure the nation but as soon as the government got to power it denied making such promises. “We are here to put an end to dictatorial tendencies and this is a war between light and darkness and I can assure you that light would prevail. We are going to win and we will win,” Obi said.

In his speech, Buba Galadima, the leader of a breakaway group from the ruling party which transmuted into Reformed-APC, R-APC, hailed the MoU, saying it would send shivers down the spine of the ruling party.

He said that since he led a splinter group out of the APC, the R-APC members had been receiving death threat messages and messages of solidarity from across the world.

According to Galadima, Buhari “is destined to lose the 2019 election and lose his deposit.”

The former ally to the president, who claimed that he knew Buhari so well, said that if he were to advise him, he would ask him not to contest in 2019.

Nevertheless, Galadima warned that being a military general, the president would not go down without a fight. He said: “Let us not forget that the man we will be facing is a military general. We are ready, prepared to take on this fight despite their intimidation and threats.”

Similarly,, Secondus spoke about what might eventually be the lot of those in the opposition against Buhari. In his speech to the CUDP, the national chair of the PDP said that the opposition are ready to be arrested, intimidated and even killed.

He said that the Buhari regime had been carrying on as if it had cowed every Nigerian, warning that there was no way the regime would kill all the opposing views.

He berated the regime for its actions, adding that the government of Buhari was planning to either arrest or jail vocal members of the opposition before the 2019 general elections.

He said: “Just last week, the APC conquest regime came up with Executive Order which all political watchers including civil society groups liken to Decree 2 of the military era.

“We know why they are doing this on the eve of a general election because they know the people have turned their back on them, but they want to retain power at all costs including cowing us down….

“We must stand up for the rule of law to prevail or posterity would judge us harshly.

“Our leaders were fearless and united and they rescued this country from draconian regimes in the past.

“By what we are doing today, fear has taken flight and the spirit of God has taken over, we must stand up to defend our people.

“I therefore call on all of us to be strong, steadfast and courageous. Let’s chase out the APC in our lives and form a national government that will bring succour to our people,” Secondus said.

Just as Galadima and Secondus had warned, it was Governor Ayodele Faoyse of Ekiti State and his supporters who were first to taste the wrath of security agencies. On Wednesday, July 11, at the PDP governorship rally held in Ado-Ekiti, the state capital, the governor was tear-gassed and assaulted by the police who disrupted the political gathering.

Fayose, characteristically, had commended the formation the CUDP, saying it was a project that would send “Buhari away ahead of his time.”

The governor accused the federal government of using security agencies to intimidate members of his party and supporters ahead of the Saturday, July 14, governorship election in the state.

But in its reaction the APC described the development as a gang-up. Bolaji Abdullahi, the national publicity secretary of the party, in a statement, said no amount of “gang-up” would dissuade it from carrying on with its anti-corruption war and improving the lives of the people of the country.

In a similar version, Adams Oshiomhole, national chairman of the APC, said the CUDP was not a threat to his party and that he was not intimidated or frightened.

Oshiomhole, who gave his reaction at the inauguration of its elected national executive of the 39-member Non-National Working Committee, NWC, on Wednesday, July 11, at the party’s national secretariat, described the coalition as a collection of old coaches searching frantically for new ideas.

He said the coalition only proved that each of the parties in the coalition could not stand alone to face the APC and that they would fail, even as a team.

He said the message they have simply passed is “we want to capture power even though we are different, but for the purpose of capturing power, we will unite’, and I do not think Nigerians need any further explanation that enough of this opportunistic politicking.

“The more they search, the more they get old players, not even the best of them, but the worst of old players and I do not think Nigerians can be fooled by a coalition like that. If you harness the energy of one million snails and transform it into one snail to run, it cannot catch up with an antelope.

“It was a clear admission that as things stand today, neither the one we defeated before, the PDP, nor the new one that claim they have formed a new party but populated by the same old tired legs, or the mushroom parties that were formed for the purpose of getting handouts from INEC but that they agreed that none of them has what it takes,” he said.

Also,  Oshimhole described those leaving the APC to join the CUDP as mercenaries who joined the party because of what they could gain and failed to do so.

Reiterating that he was ready to listen and address genuine grievances of the party members, he, however, said for the mercenaries, the doors and windows of the party were wide open.

“For the mercenaries, who mistakenly joined the party because of what they can gain personally, not for the good of the country, not for the good of the party. They came in purely for greener pastures and they have found that they have had to work hard to plant the grass, to wet it, nourish it for it to become green and they cannot wait.

“They want to run, not because we have wronged them but because we just cannot satisfy a mercenary. For those ones, we will not only open the door, we are ready to open even the windows.”

That notwithstanding, barely 24 hours after the formation of the CUDP, the APC announced its own coalition with another group of 20 political parties on Tuesday, July 10, to join forces with the party in an alliance to form the Coalition of Progressives Political Parties, CPPP.

The political parties in pro-Buhari’s CPPP which met in Abuja, on Tuesday, are: the ruling APC; Accord Party; Peoples Democratic Movement, PDM; United Progressive Party, UPP; Advanced People’s Democratic Alliance, APDA; Hope Democratic Party, HDP; Democratic Peoples Party, DPP and Unity Party of Nigeria, UPN.

Others are: Freedom Justice Party, FJP; Fresh Party, FP; New Nigeria’s Peoples Party, NNPP; Nigeria’s Peoples Congress, NPC; Nigeria Peoples Movement, NPM; Allied Congress Party of Nigeria, ACPN; National Action Congress, NAC, and National Democratic Liberty Party, NDLP.

Bashir Yusuf Ibrahim, the chairman of the coalition, who is also the national chairman of PDM, told reporters after hours of meeting at the Transcorp Hilton, Abuja, that the coalition was made up of like-minded political parties who believe in Nigeria’s unity and stability.

He disclosed that the coalition, which was formed in 2014 ahead of the 2015 presidential election aligned with the candidature of Buhari, then the APC candidate and that it merely resurrected to counter the orchestrated PDP coalition against the APC-led government.

Berating the PDP coalition, he said the parties were driven by selfishness and hunger to capture power in 2019.

Ibrahim argued: “We do not believe that our country should be governed by people whose only objective is to capture power. For what purpose is that coalition built? Is it for the purpose of taking Nigeria back to 1999 and 2015 or is it for the purpose of building a new Nigeria?

“That purpose has not been stated, even in their memorandum. The only thing in their MoU is to agree to capture power in 2019. Their programme has not been made known to the Nigerian public. We will not be part of a coalition that does not have a programme for Nigeria.”

Ibrahim said the objective of the CPPP was to mobilise Nigerians to play a greater role in political activities and ensure that they were given the right to elect their leaders in a free, fair and credible electoral process.

Similarly, faulting the formation of the CUDP, Balarbe Musa, a former governor of Kaduna State, described the signing of the MoU by the 39 political parties and groups ahead of the 2019 general elections as an act of “opportunism.”

In an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, in Abuja, on Tuesday, July 10, he said: “I don’t think a coalition like this, which is opportunistic, will be able to defeat the governing party that is, the All Progressives Congress, APC.”

Musa, who is the national chairman of the Peoples Redemption Party, PRP, said his party was not part of the coalition, said the reason for forming the coalition was not noble.

“Remember, the reason for coming together is simply because they have lost the opportunities for sharing power…

“There is no fundamental difference between them and the APC; they are just an electoral gang to defeat the APC. I don’t think the coalition is enough,” he said.

According to him, what is needed is an alliance which is ideologically more focused than the APC and not just an aberration of what the APC stands for.

“In any case also, they have to contend with other alliances. I don’t think it will make any difference at all.

“Between now and August, we will know whether they can make qualitative difference and do what APC is able to do,” Musa said.

Be that as it may, Anthony Kila, a Jean Monnet professor of Strategy and Development, believes that the APC and Buhari should be blamed for their current problems. Reacting, in a letter he wrote in from Cambridge, United Kingdom, Kila said:

“As history and political science have taught us, a major consequence of having a political coalition in government is the need for a bespoke leadership for such formation. Such formation tends to be either that of a strong party managed by strong party leaders that hold the government of the coalition alive and to account or a strong head of government who either by practice or by election and or acclamation is also the leader of the coalition.

“In the case of the APC, one bespoke option could have been that of a strong party chairman and party executive council that hold alive the government and the coalition by liaising with the legislative arm of government, leading personalities and various components of the coalition to ensure consultation, deliberation and representation.

“In the case of the APC, another bespoke option could have been a strong passionate, partisan and participative president that holds the coalition together by balancing and satisfying sectorial, ideological and identity interests of the coalition whilst ensuring popularity and consolidation of the party through performance and dialogue with the general public.”

Sadly, Kila noted that in practice, “the APC chose and showed none of the two manifestly advisable options. Rather they opted for the opposite and even absent of the two possible options. The party tried to rule the country through a weak structure that seems totally uninfluential in terms of governance, policies and appointments. The party was seen and said to be an underfunded, generally inactive and sometimes reactive structure led by good but uncharismatic and uninfluential chairman in the person of Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, who amazingly tried to stay as chairman even when it was clear to even his most ardent supporters that his lacklustre reign was over.

“To compound the situation, the APC also presented a detached presidency that woke up to party affairs only when it was rather too late. When one thinks of President Buhari and his party what often comes to mind is the saying of the marsh standing aloof; acting as if it were not the river’s kin. Even Buhari’s most devout followers will agree in their hearts of hearts that the president could have and should have done a lot more in terms of governance and politics.

“The result of a coalition government managed by a weak party and an absent president is erosion of popular support, malcontent amongst party chieftains and dismemberment.”

In any case, Kingsley Moghalu, the presidential aspirant of the Young Progressive Party, YPP, however, said what Nigerians needed now was a paradigm shift and not a coalition of party for effective change in 2019. “We need a paradigm shift in governance. A regrouping of the booted out PDP and members of the failed APC will not achieve that. Things are falling apart and the centre cannot hold. The shifting allegiances of the same old faces and the same old career politicians will mean the same old problems for Nigeria.”

Moghalu, who spoke in an interview, said: “Our long-suffering masses need something new, something different, and something bold if we have truly learnt the lessons of 2015. Remember: another coalition brought the APC into the presidency. With the PDP-led MoU and the disastrous performance of the APC, the path is now open for a real transformative third force and generational shift, which a Kingsley Moghalu presidency would represent for Nigeria.”

That, indeed, is key. But whether the APC or the new coalition would be the choice of Nigerians is anybody’s guess. For now, the showdown has started.

– Jul. 13, 2018 @ 12:35 GMT |

Tags: Forces against Buhari as the 2019 Showdown begins