By Kolawole Ojebisi
A former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babchir Lawal, has revealed why the anti-Tinubu coalition has not adopted a political platform to pursue its goal.
Lawal said the movement is looking for a party without intractable constitutional or legal encumbrances that could work against the objectives of the emerging coalition.
He said, “I can tell you, categorically, that we haven’t as a group, concluded on where we are going — whether it is ADC, SDP or any other party. We haven’t. But you see, we have two technical committees that have been working since last year. One is going to review all the political parties in Nigeria. The parameters for review is this.
“First of all, review the constitution of the parties: which one gives room for the type of thing we want to do, like takeover the leadership, strengthen the leadership, and use it as a platform? If, for example, your Constitution says that you can’t contest any election if you aren’t a member of this party for a particular number of years, obviously, that party will be ticked out. Do they have intractable legal issues? We can’t go in and inherit a problem that we can’t solve. Do they have intractable management crisis? Typically, PDP where you know that it is impossible to fix it, we tick that party out”.
Lawal added, “That’s what they are doing with the technical and legal committees. Eventually, they have narrowed down to a few political parties and we will negotiate. Other conditions are there. We can’t have a political party where the presidential candidate has no say in the leadership. Are they willing to allow us lead the leadership? What are terms and conditions for that? Have they at least, one elected person in government or Assembly on an election conducted by INEC? Do they have any member of the House of Assembly elected in any of the states of the federation? Do they have a serving senator, or a serving governor because we are afraid that the Electoral Act suggests that if you don’t have any elected member, you can be de-registered.
“So, are we going to go into a platform that after we enter, they will deregister us? So, these are the criteria and ofcourse, typical of politics, I am closer to chairman of one party, you are closer to another national chairman, why not go in there? We have to manage all these intentions. So, that’s what has taken the time, but we will get there. We are getting to the end. I can confirm, we had a meeting recently where the expectations is that we will get to the end of this process last week, but other issues arose and we said, okay, let’s give ourselves more time to look at these issues. Some other political parties came to complain that if we do delegates, we didn’t contact them, we didn’t involve them; it is like unfair treatment.
“We are politicians and we said, okay, let’s us get time; let’s talk to everybody, so that we fulfill all righteousness even though we have an idea of our preferred party.”
