(UPdated with picture :Former Vice President and presidential aspirant of All Progressives Congress (APC), Atiku Abubakar and Gen Muhammadu Buhari, presidential contender of APC at a meeting of the party’s stakeholders of the northern states in Kaduna over the weekend)
By Lawal A. Dogara, Kaduna
As part of efforts by the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the North to approach the 2015 presidential election as a united force,all the presidential aspirants on the platform of the party and other party chieftains met in Kaduna on Saturday to renew their strategy on how to defeat President Goodluck Jonathan in the 2015 elections.
Specifically,an aspirant and former head of state,General Muhammadu Buhari told the gathering that if the Jonathan-led Federal Government was allowed to continue in 2015,Nigeria would go down the drain.
However,representatives of the Arewa Consultative Forum(ACF) and that of the Northern Elders Forum(NEF),Mr.Solomon Dalung and Dr.Hakeem Baba Ahmed,admonished the presidential aspirants under the APC not to vie for the exalted office just to satisfy their families and pockets but to work for the development of Nigerians.
The duo threatened to disown any one amongst them who decided to turn into a selfish leader,saying they would rather remain with the Nigerian masses.
Buhari who spoke for himself and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar during the APC stakeholders meeting,said 2015 was another year of extreme concern to Nigerians and called on the APC chieftains not allow their members to be disenfranchised during the 2015 elections.
The APC ,he said,was now in a better position to wrestle power from the PDP and urged for vigilance among APC members against all manipulations.
He said “I contested the Presidential election three times in this country and failed and ended up in Supreme courts and lost the case.The first time, the judges agreed that there was no election were from the South and they are all Christians. But, the second time, the Judges that declared the that PDP had won despite the irregularities are Fulani from Adamawa and Taraba and a Nupe man. That was when I understood that, it is not about religion and ethnicity, but about Naira and Dollars.”
He said the amount of soldiers, police, SSS deployed to Ekiti State during the election, if same is deployed to the troubled north east, they would have secured the release of the 200 abducted girls.
“Nigeria is tired of incompetent leadership, so we must be ready to make sacrifices that will salvage the country, let us not allow our people to be disenfranchised during the elections, we must be united to ensure a free, fair and credible elections in 2015.”
APC members,he said,must be united and make a difference in the 2015 general elections so as to salvage all Nigerians.
