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The leadership of the Action Congress (AC) has said
the party will field a strong candidate against President Goodluck
Jonathan if the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) fields him as its
candidate. The party however refused to comment on whether Nuhu Ribadu,
former anti-graft czar, was a primary contender for its presidential
ticket.

A guarded affair

The National Chairman of the party, Bisi Akande, who
addressed the press in Abuja yesterday, said that the PDP has again
foisted another crisis on the country as a result of its zoning
arrangement. He also accused Mr. Jonathan of being too “inconsistent.”
Mr. Akande said that the AC has closely watched as the PDP has tried to
elevate the internal problem within the party to the level of national
discourse. “It has become an unnecessary distraction,” he said. The
ruling party, he remarked, is being pushed by a large pool of confusion
that may rapidly swell into “the abyss of destabilization, disunity and
abject poverty.” He added that the PDP has allowed the daunting
challenges of unemployment, poverty and security challenges to go
unchecked. Instead, he said, it has shifted its focus on where the
presidency should be zoned to.

Mr. Akande did not directly address which AC party
members are likely to run for office but took another swipe at the PDP
by saying that zoning is not an issue. “We have 50 well qualified
presidential candidates drawn from various parts of the country, he
said. “We are out to encourage and persuade a younger generation of
Nigerians to seize the moment and fashion out creative and practicable
solutions to the myriads of problems facing the country.” Mr. Akande
added that good and capable hands abound across the country,
irrespective of geo-political location or ethnic background.

According to him, while the ruling party has stolen
enough and is presently fighting on sharing formula for the heist,
those of them in AC have set up a high level committee to go round the
entire country to consult widely on what should be their attitude to
the issue of geopolitical, religion and ethnic separateness. On the
rumoured merger between the Progressive People’s Alliance and PDP, he
disclosed that the AC face pressure to merge with other political
parties, associations, groups and individuals.

“We are keeping this in view with an aim of expanding membership
composition and renewing our thinking horizon about leadership roles
that would encompass inspiring a shared vision and keeping hope alive,”
he said.</