OBONO-OBLA: TAMBUWAL IS AN OPPORTUNIST SPONSORED BY POLITICAL OLIGARCHS

Those who are clamouring and promoting the candidacy of Tambuwal are enemies of the APC and the people of Nigeria who are surely yearning for a change and tired of a leader who is susceptible to the whims and caprices and biddings of some anonymous political oligarchs.

The rather cold and negative reaction of the thousands of APC faithful and Nigerians alike to the news of Tambuwal’s collection of a presidential nomination form of the APC last weekend is a signal to those who are selfishly promoting and pushing his candidacy, that there is likely to be a serious backlash and hostility to his candidacy. A word is enough for the wise.

The politics of presidency nomination and election is not all about youthful vibrancy, media savvies, blitz and razzmatazz.

We toiled and burnt the midnight candle to negotiate the merger of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP), factions of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and Democratic Peoples Party (DPP) from January to June 2013 into one political party-APC.

I remember how Ocholi James and I were given the responsibility of editing the final draft constitution of the APC in June, 2013. We spent three sleepless nights in the Nassarawa State Governor’s Lodge, Abuja working to beat the deadline for submission of the constitution to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), so that APC could be registered.

I pay tribute to all the members of the merger committees of the defunct ACN, CPC, APGA, DPP and ANPP, who toiled tirelessly to lay the foundation for the merger of these defunct parties in order for APC to emerge like a colossus in the Nigerian political firmament.

We were united in spirit and bonded by the desire to see the birth of a pan national progressive social movement that would be the centre of the gravitation of social forces in 2015 that will finally wage an epic battle once and for all against the retrogressive elites and forces that have held this country down for nearly half a century.

It is curious that today some power elites and oligarchs are scheming to hand over the platform of the APC to their surrogates as the platform to contest the next presidential election even though they know in the inner recesses of their hearts that these surrogates would not win election for the party.

These oligarchs are simply afraid that somebody who the Nigerian people desire and have empathy with, who stands  a chance of winning the nomination of the APC and eventually going ahead to win the 2015 presidential election.

The APC presidential ticket cannot be thrown to those who idly stood by when the PDP was using all manner of shenanigan and chicanery to make itself the only political party in Nigeria. The doors of the APC should be permanently shut to opportunists that now want to reap from where they did not sow.