26th May, 2013
The Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) has described as a bad omen for the 2015 general elections the rejection of the result of the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) by governors who are undoubtedly acting the script written for them by the presidency and the leadership of the PDP.
In a statement issued in Lagos on Sunday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said the message that the presidency, through the puppet governors, is sending to the nation is that the outcome of the 2015 elections will only be valid if a certain candidate emerges the winner.
”If an election involving only 35 governors can generate so much controversy and threaten to overheat the polity, what
will happen when millions of Nigerians vote in 2015? Is this how President Goodluck Jonathan, who is the Godfather of the losing governors, has been sanitizing the electoral process as he has been enthusing?
”The show of shame by the bad losers supporting Gov. Jonah Jang, of course at the behest of the presidency, is an extension
of the threat that has been issued by some rabble-rousers that it is either Jonathan for 2015 or there will be no Nigeria as
we know it. This is the Gbagbo Option that plunged Cote d’Ivoire into a crisis in which it is yet to fully emerge. This is what the puppet governors are pushing for, hence they must be called to order urgently!
”Governors who participated willingly and fully in the NGF election have suddenly turned around and called the election a fraud after their candidate has lost. What were they thinking when they voted? Could it be that they were so sure that their arm-twisting tactics had worked and hence were sure of victory, only to be drubbed? Did they deviate from the presidency’s script that they should only use the consensus they extracted from unwilling governors
instead of an election to determine the NGF chairmanship?
”If they realized the ballot papers were not serialized, as the bad losers later claimed, why did they participate in the election? Couldn’t they have raised an objection and refused to participate? Were they dragged to the venue of the polls screaming and kicking? If so where is the evidence that they were forced to act against their will?” it queried.
ACN condemned the meddlesomeness of the presidency in the election of what is not – in reality – more than a social club, and particularly criticized President Jonathan, as the leader of his party and of the country, for expending so much of the little goodwill he has on the NGF elections.
”Irrespective of the tepid denial by the presidency, Nigerians are aware that the arrowhead of the puppet governors, Gov. Godswill Akpabio, is acting at the behest of the presidency. What President Jonathan did by his meddlesomeness is to stake his presidency on the NGF elections, thereby making the elections a referendum on his leadership of his party and country. In both instances, he got the outcome he deserved: A leader who cannot hold his party together cannot hold a nation together.
”And here are some of the lessons that the presidency should learn, if it so wishes, from the outcome of the NGF elections – There is always a limit to hubris and the use of naked power against perceived opponents. Needless to say that latent power is more potent than naked power. A leader should never do things just because he can. The presidency and the ruling party have lost control of themselves. They are bound to also lose control of the nation – democratically – in 2015. Make no mistake about it!” the party warned.
Meanwhile, the ACN has called for a probe of the apparently forged document being circulated by the losing governors to show they had harvested the signatures of 18 governors pushing for a consensus candidate just before the elections.
The party said the fact that the signature of a governor, who neither attended the meeting of the PDP chapter of the NGF nor send a representative, was included in the consensus list is an indication that the signatures were harvested long before the meeting and the day of the election. Of course, it is also clear that the dates on the typed document were cancelled and new dates handwritten.
”If the losing governors are insisting that the list is genuine and that the signatures were obtained at the NGF-PDP meeting shortly before the voting, then they owe Nigerians an explanation on how a man who did not attend the meeting or send a representative could have signed the document in question,” it said.
ACN advised Gov. Akpabio and his group to accept the result of the NGF elections instead of threatening to break the NGF – and overheat the polity – just to satisfy their masters, saying national interest should supersede parochial interest.