CNPP Joins Critics of Planned National Confab

Posted by African Examiner Ayo Balogun, Featured, Lagos, Latest Headlines, News Wednesday, October 16th, 2013

Ayo Balogun, Lagos

“We call on the Presidency to respond to the germane message that truly, the national conference is a Greek Gift, diversionary and deceptive.”

Former Governor of Lagos state, Bola Ahmed Tinubu

The Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP) stated this in a statement issued to back the position of the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress Asiwaju Bola Tinubu against President Jonathan’s planned national confab.

Not happy with the comment of the APC chieftain, Presidency on Monday attacked him saying he is only focusing on 2015 election while many “patriotic Nigerians” are looking beyond 2015.

In Tinubu’s defence, however, a statement by CNPP National Publicity Secretary, Osita Okwchukwu, said the presidency should answer very fundamental questions raised by Tinubu in his statement.

The CNPP statement partly reads:

“We listened carefully to the statement made by Tinubu on his arrival from a medical trip abroad and it is in tandem with CNPP’s position that President Jonathan is deceptively building a bridge to nowhere, as we cannot tell how the resolutions of the conference will work outside the 1999 Constitution without a Sovereign National Conference.

“Accordingly, our understanding is that Asiwaju, outside the diversionary and deceptive outlook of President Goodluck Jonathan’s conference, is worried about the credibility, reliability and capability of Mr. President to pull Nigeria through a free, fair and transparent 2015 general elections.

“CNPP pages with Asiwaju on the truism that Mr. President’s failure to pull through the unintended consequences of the conference may hazard and scuttle the 2015 general elections, especially when ethnic merchants dominate the 13-man Prep Committee.

“This fear is based on how President Jonathan demonstrated gross ineptitude and incapacity to manage his political party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

“For with the umbrella of his party in tatters, how can he mobilise the party’s majority in the state and national assemblies to amend the 1999 Constitution and accommodate issues to be raised by the National Conference? For instance, the agitation of the Ijaw National Congress and others for self-determination.”