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… Says political parties are cults
The interim National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Chief Bisi Akande, has expressed optimism that the internal democratic mechanisms within the new party will transform former military Head of State, General Muhammadu Buhari from a dictator to a democrat.
Buhari has been in active partisan politics since 2003 and has serially contested and lost all the presidential elections since then.
Fielding questions from select journalists in his Ila Orangun home, Akande said Buhari has demonstrated that he wants to be transformed into a democrat from a dictator based on the debates members of the new party have been having with him.
“Buhari’s military junta sent many Nigerians to prison, including myself, but Buhari as a politician demonstrated to the whole country he wanted to deviate from the military way of doing things to a democratic way of doing things.
“So, we have been working with him. We have been discussing issues. In the military, you don’t debate; now, we have been debating with Buhari. He said recently that he was ready to contest the primary with any member of the APC, and if he was defeated, he was going to support the winner. In the military, you don’t wait to be defeated; you arrest those who want to contest with you and you kill them. So, the environment of politics of democracy is waiting to change Buhari to a democrat”.
Akande, however ruled out the possibility of APC conducting conventional primaries to elect candidates for election saying political parties are like cults and individual cults have their peculiar goals and means of achieving the goals.
“What we are saying is that internal democracy as conceived by certain people is an abnormality in politics. A political party is like a cult; you have a goal, and only those who understand that goal can reach it.
“But if you throw it open and a rich man comes, even PDP that is much richer, they can send their people to come and buy the party from us, and before we know it, they will be members of the National Assembly, governors and they will call it APC, or ACN.
“We don’t want that. We want those who are well groomed in our culture to represent us. So, our own is a guided internal democracy. Guided internal democracy never forbids primaries, but the primaries too will be according to the regulation of our party. We won’t contest with ourselves like a general election. That is what is destroying PDP now; they want to claim to the world that they are democratic when they are not. We don’t want that”.
On the unusual political alliance between the South West and the Hausa/Fulani core north that culminated into the formation of the APC, Akande said the political marriage is aimed at overcoming the over 200 years bitterness between the two zones.
“In 2005, myself and some other colleagues in the South-West thought that for almost 200 years, there had been bitterness between the North-West and the South-West since the jihad of Othman Dan Fodio and the resistance of the emergence of the Fulani hegemony through Oyo to the South-West, which led to the takeover of Ilorin from the Yoruba.
“We sat down in 2005 and said no, we can’t continue fighting. We fought for 200 years; can’t we be friends for a while? Maybe because the Yoruba and the Hausa/Fulani are fighting, maybe that is why Nigeria seemed not to have peace or progress.
“Then, we said we would do everything to woo the Hausa/Fulani to work with us. Maybe for once, we will have a progressive Nigeria and we stretched the hand of friendship to them, particularly to Buhari through Balarabe Musa, and we set up a committee.
“After the election, we started talking again, and we are happy, today, we are in a union not only of the South-West and North-West, we are the reunion of the entire country. The whole of Nigeria is in the basket now, and that is why we are sure we are going to win 2015 election’, he said.