With the Lagos Guber Candidate Ticket of Fashola confirmed by the ACN .
Now, for the second time in a month, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) yesterday accused the Federal Government of plotting to arrest and silence its national leader and former Lagos State Governor, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
The Federal Government, the ACN alleged, plans to put Tinubu out of circulation to check his rising political profile and demobilise the ACN ahead of April’s general election.
The party had on December 5 last year alerted Nigerians to "the surreptitious and dangerous moves being made to silence Tinubu."
A few days later, the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) chair, Sam Saba, said the CCB would dust up against Tinubu, a case of keeping a foreign account while in office. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had earlier investigated the case without any evidence against the former governor...
Spokesman of the ACN, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, told reporters in Lagos yesterday that President Goodluck Jonathan had finally succumbed to the "unceasing pressure by signing on to the evil plan."
Mohammed said: "Now, we have it on a good authority that the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, (Mr. Mohammed Adoke), has been under tremendous pressure to look for any offence, no matter how flimsy, to get Tinubu arrested and prosecuted – just to put him away." He alleged that the President "may sign a warrant of Tinubu’s arrest anytime from now."
He warned: "We will not sit back and fold our arms while those who fought for the democracy we are enjoying today are demonised and decapitated. We reject the targeting of Tinubu, who they see as the architect of the change that is threatening the PDP.
"Nothing must happen to this icon of democracy and good governance, so as not to set in motion a chain of events the end of which no one can predict."
Mohammed said the ACN’s phenomenal leap is making the PDP envious, hence the focus on Tinubu who is seen as "the architect of PDP’s deconstruction, who has to be stopped at all costs."
Apart from winning back its mandate in Edo, Ekiti and Osun states in the South-West where its candidates are now occupying the government houses, the ACN has also been making an in-road into other parts of the country.
Mohammed said internal democracy in the ACN and its discipline have attracted into the party the likes of Senator John James Akpanodoedehe (Akwa Ibom); Senator Ifeanyi Araraume and ex-Governor Achike Udenwa (Imo State); Former Transport Minister Abiye Sekibo (Rivers State); Senator George Akume (Benue State), Senator Saminu Turaki (Jigawa State); Senator Joel Danlami (Taraba State); five members of the National Assembly in Anambra State and the entire Congress of Progressive Party (CPC) structure in Bauchi State.
"As our party’s fortune rises, the prospect of the ruling PDP becomes dimmer and dimmer by the day.
"As the general elections approach, it is becoming increasingly clear to the discerning that we are the toast of all Nigerians seeking better governance and the deepening of democracy".
During the week, former President Olusegun Obasanjo was believed to have visited the national secretariat of the PDP to press the leadership to "do something about the crises in the party in the South-West so as to check the ACN" or he would quit.
Mohammed said those behind the plot to arrest Tinubu, in one of their meetings, "said everything must be done to stop the putative alliance between our party and the CPC, which they see as capable of ending the years of misrule by the PDP."
He then raised some posers: "Why the arrest of Tinubu at the time of the registration of voters? Why when there is a merger talk between the ACN and the CPC? Why when people are leaving the PDP in droves?"
He said the PDP men pressuring the President to get Tinubu arrested "are firmly of the belief that his arrest will destabilise the ACN".
Mohammed said there is a growing desperation by the PDP, saying the sum of $1billion "was secretly and hurriedly shared out to states from the excess crude accounts, just to secure support for President Jonathan and give his backers the necessary war chest needed to fight ahead of the April election." The money, he alleged, was shared in foreign currency to the detriment of the naira.
"In recent times, bombs have been exploding across the country in an unprecedented degeneration of security in a country that is not at war. Hundreds have been killed or maimed. Do we know those behind it? Do we know their motives? Could it be part of the end game? We leave Nigerians to judge."
But Goodluck/Sambo Campaign Organisation yesterday dismissed the allegations. The organisation also said it was not true that six Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governors were made to donate N500 million each to the President's campaign.
The Director of Media and Publicity of the organisation, Mr. Sully Abu, in a statement in Abuja frowned at what he called "the recent penchant of politicians for broadcasting total fabrications in the garb of 'revelations'."
The ploy, according to Abu, is to "pile up one lie over the other with the hope that something murky would stick."
Describing Alhaji Mohammed's allegations as similar to Alhaji Atiku Abubakar's "tissue of lies", Abu wondered under what financial sub-heads the monies allegedly taken from states' coffers would have been released.
He called on the security agencies to investigate Mohammed's "outrageous claims" that "one billion dollars have been secretly and hurriedly shared out to the states from the excess crude oil accounts, just to secure support for President Jonathan and give his backers the necessary war chest needed to fight ahead of April's election."
Abu stressed that no amount of blackmail or wicked propaganda would distract President Jonathan from his focused march to keep a date with destiny in the 2011 elections
