The vice-presidential candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), Pastor Tunde Bakare, has revealed the untold story of why the alliance talks between his party and the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) failed.
Bakare, who spoke with Sunday Tribune on the telephone at the weekend, debunked media reports that it was his refusal to accede to the ACN request that he (Bakare) should step down as a vice-presidential candidate of the CPC for an ACN nominee to occupy that position that brought a dead end to the alliance talks.
He said he was not a party to a meeting where such request was made.
What he said “transpired in the secret” was that at a meeting where representatives of both parties met, the condition placed before them by the ACN, to enter into an alliance agreement with the CPC, was that he should sign a post-dated letter, that after his swearing-in as a vice-president on May 29, he would resign on June 1 for an ACN nominee to come in, a condition he said was never in their plan ab initio.
“To move this nation forward, we have agreed that we will not touch the office of the president and the vice-president because it is illegal to do so now. But they asked me to sign a post-dated letter that when I’m sworn-in on the 29th of May, I will step down on the 1st of June. I have copies with me.
“I can’t sign such letters in secret. How do I face millions of people within and outside the country that I went in secret to sign a letter that I will be sworn-in on the 29th of May and step down on the 1st of June? What kind of negotiation is that?
“That is not a sacrifice, that is compromise and compromise always brings about captivity.
“The same people held on to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to demand that they would appoint ministers and attorney-general. You are fighting the PDP at the centre and you want to go and form a government with them. They didn’t hold on to the CPC, they’ve also gone to the PDP.
“What is going on is horse-trading and prostitution and I’m not a party to that. A destructive means cannot bring a constructive end. It is not about me; it is the secrecy of me signing a letter that is post-dated. They just wanted to take a chance. With or without alliance, we are winning the election,” Bakare said.
When asked to confirm the validity of a report that it was former head of state, General Ibrahim Babangida, who hosted the purported meeting, Bakare said he could not confirm if it was true because he was not at the meeting.
According to him, “I’m not in a position to confirm that because I wasn’t there.
But when asked if he too was fed with such information, Bakare said, “you know information these days; people say different kinds of things. But I know that part of those who brokered the meeting of the Northern consensus candidacy were there, maybe. I didn’t see him. I was not at any meeting with anybody.”
On the insinuation that the role played by former Governor Bola Tinubu of Lagos State in the alliance talk and his status in the party might not go down well with Buhari’s philosophies and that this might have contributed to the failure of the alliance talks, Bakare said he did not know.
“General Muhammadu Buhari is ready to work with anybody to move this nation forward. He said it at the last press conference we had in Abuja to round off our campaign for 2011,” he stated.
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