2019: 11 parties, 5 CSO’s allign to unseat Buhari
…They’re paper weight without political clout- APC spokesman
Ahead of 2019 general elections, 11 political parties and five Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) have formed a new coalition to unseat President Muhammadu Buhari and the All Progressives Congress (APC).
The Vice Chairman of the coalition and Chairman of National Rescue Movement (NRM), Senator Saidu Dansadau, said that the coalition was formed by political parties that are not members of Coalition of United Political Partied (CUPP) or any other alliance working with the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Dansadau, who spoke during a press conference in Abuja on Thursday, disclosed that the new coalition named ‘Rescue Alliance for National Development’ (RAND) with the motto: ‘Nigeria first’ has the vision “to rescue Nigeria and provide competent leadership for national unity, peace and development”.
He added that the alliance was borne out of the desire to build a prosperous nation as it has become glaring that both the PDP and APC have failed to lead the country out of the woods.
He said: “Interestingly, in 2015, Nigerians in their numbers, having seen the failure of the PDP, did what was hitherto unthinkable and massively voted for the newly engineered APC, with so much hope in the ideals of selfless nation-building.
“Alas, Nigerians went from frying pan to fire. The economy went into a tailspin bringing in its trail, high unemployment, poverty, hunger, youth despondency and unacceptable levels of criminality across the land.”
According to him, the present situation has made Nigerians poorer as the economy has been battered due incompetent leadership.
He said, “Nigeria today has the highest global percentage of children out of school, the largest internally displaced persons (IDPs) in a country not at war;
72% poverty level becoming the nation with the highest number of poor people in the world, rising incidences of security threats ranging from insurgency to terrorism, from kidnappings to rampant murders, from herdsmen attacks to cattle rustling”.
Dansadau pointed out the the coalition will present a single presidential candidate that will be endorsed by all the members.
He said that the coalition will be guided by an objective template of discipline, integrity, intelligence and the endorsed candidate must have the capacity to formulate policies that will take Nigeria out economic recession and reposition it on a path of growth.
He disclosed that every party participating in the coalition will maintain its identity and conduct their presidential primary elections at the end of which the coalition will chose the best from the candidates that emerged.
Three political parties that make up the coalition -National Rescue Movement (NRM), Alliance for United Nigeria (AUN) and National Coalition of Democrats (NCD) were present at the event.
Also present were Ambassador Felix Osakwe Johnson, presidential aspirant of Social Democratic Party (SDP), Ibrahim Usman Alhaji, presidential aspirant NRM, and Hamzad Yusuf of AUN among others.
When contacted last night over the matter, the Acting National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Mr Yekini Nabena, told The Daily Times that the arrowheads of the groups are political jesters and should be ignored.
He simply said, ” They are paper weight and lack the political clout to make any difference over the imminent victory of President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019.”
