BY CLIFFORD NDUJIHE, DEP. POLITICAL EDITOR
TWO leading opposition political parties in the country – Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) are ever willing, on paper,  to embark on any move that could stop the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.

Having failed to stop the PDP individually and jointly in the last 12 years on three occasions, the two parties want to do it this year. To realise the quest, their leaders are traveling on a familiar path – alliance, to present a joint presidential candidate against President Goodluck Jonathan, the PDP’s standard bearer.

The ACN and ANPP it was learnt have raised teams for informal talks to negotiate with one another.

Issues to be trashed out include how the joint candidate would be picked and operational mechanism of the accord.

Adopting the consensus approach, the ACN at its recent national convention picked Nuhu Ribadu as its presidential candidate, while Ibrahim Shekarau fought off a challenge from Chief Harry Akande and Alh Othman Tofa  to clinch the ANPP ticket at the party’s primaries in Abuja.

Ribadu

Onu said last week that the ANPP was keen on forging the accord with ACN as a potent weapon to dislodge the PDP from power at the centre.

“Our party is still engaged in talks with the ACN and as soon as we arrive at a meaningful agreement, we will inform the public,” Onu said.

As it was in 1999

Going into an alliance or an accord with rival parties is a familiar road for the ANPP. Incidentally, the current quest is being led by Onu, a victim of the party’s first voyage into political alliance.

In 1999, Onu won the All Peoples Party, APP (as ANPP was then known) presidential primaries on February 14, 1999. In a crowded field involving the likes of Harry Akande, Bode Olajumoke, Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, Onu, the first civilian governor of Abia State emerged as the surprise winner of the contest.

Then, the Mahmud Waziri-led APP leadership was neck-deep in alliance talks with the Amb. Tanko Yusuf-led Alliance for Democracy (AD), whose members later formed the Action Congress (AC), which later metamorphosed into ACN.

Onu enjoyed the backing of the APP hierarchy and accepted his leaders’ alliance moves. Other presidential aspirants did not accept the accord terms and so were not “selected.”

On the other hand, Chief Olu Falae of the AD defeated late Chief Bola Ige and Dr. Chukwuemeka Ezeife at a controversial elders’ parley held at D’Rovans’ Hotel, Ibadan, Oyo State to pick the AD ticket on January 28, 1999.

Shekarau

After fine-tuning the alliance terms, Onu was side_stepped for Alh. Umaru Shinkafi when the APP struck an accord with AD and elected to be the junior partner. So Shinkafi ran as running mate to Chief Falae, who flew the AD/APP joint flag at the 1999 presidential polls. Falae later lost comprehensively to Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo of the PDP at the February 27 polls. Obasanjo polled 18,738,150 votes (62.78%) to Falae’s 11,110,287 (37.22%) to win the election.

Intrigues of the first accord

The outcome of the series of elections from the local councils through the governorship to the National Assembly in 1999 made the APP the leading opposition party in terms of electoral conquests.

Results of the December 5, 1998, local government elections showed the PDP as having won the majority of  the chairmanship and councilorship seats with a wider geographical spread. It was followed by the APP and then AD. APP stronghold was in the North, and the AD, in the West.

Also, after the January 9, 1999 Governorship and Houses of Assembly elections, the PDP maintained its lead by winning 21 governorship seats, the APP won  nine Governorship seats and the AD maintained its domination of the southwestern states by winning the six available states.

At the National Assembly election of February 20, 1999, PDP cornered 69 Senatorial seats and majority seats in the House of Representatives; followed by the APP with 21 Senatorial seats and a considerable number of seats in the House of Representatives.  The Alliance for Democracy maintained its third position by winning 19 Senatorial seats and the least number of seats in the House.

Thus, it was obvious that the AD ought to be the junior partner in the alliance with APP. However, the reverse was the case. There appeared to be an agreement among a larger section of the polity to ensure that the South-West zone produced the president after the annulment of the June 12, 1993 Presidential polls won by Chief M.K.O Abiola, a southwesterner and the uproar that greeted the annulment.

Thus, when Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, from Ogun State, won the PDP ticket on February 15, 1999 and  Falae was named the joint candidate of the AD/APP accord on February 16, the emergence of a southwesterner as Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar’s successor was sealed.  Onu’s fate was also sealed.

Thereafter, Dr. Onu, went into political hibernation. He remained in the APP nevertheless and fought to entrench the party in Ebonyi State.

He was not considered when the PDP swooped on APP and AD and got the parties dismembered. Mahmud Waziri the APP National Chairman was later given appointment in Obasanjo’s government.

By 2003, AD went into an unusual accord with the PDP in the South-West to ensure that President Obasanjo retained power. The outcome of that alliance was PDP’s sweep of the  polls in the South-West except Lagos, where the Governor Bola Tinubu reigned supreme. The AD as a party never recovered from that onslaught and before long, Tinubu, his defeated colleague governors and other leaders formed the AC.

How far will the alliance go?

Given this background, the question remains whether or not the accord will sail through. Currently, leaders of the ACN are in a similar talk with Gen. Muhammadu Buhari’s Congress for Progressive Change, CPC.

One of the implications of the accord, if it jelled is that either Ibrahim Shekarau or Nuhu Ribadu or both may be sacrificed. If Buhari ran on ACN ticket, it is highly improbable that he would run with a northern vice presidential candidate. The pendulum, obviously will swing to the South.