Tinubu: We're already Government in Waiting

The National Leader of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Senator Bola Tinubu, Monday urged Nigerians, both living in Nigeria and abroad to stop using the term opposition to describe opposition parties working together to form the All Progressives Congress (APC), saying the proposed merger “is a government in waiting.”Likewise, former Head of State, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd), passionately called on Nigerians across all economic, political and social strata to defend their votes and make them count in the 2015 general election. Buhari assured them that the APC “is a rare alternative to liberate Nigeria.”The two architects of the proposed merger expressed the standpoints in Lagos yesterday, at the public presentation of a book; “Witness to History: ACN and the Struggle for Democracy, Liberty and Justice,” authored by the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Lai Mohammed. Speaking at the presentation, Tinubu lamented that the political parties seeking a merger “have been in the opposition for too long. In fact, we should stop using the term opposition. We are progressives. We are government-in-waiting because we are progressives. We are not just opposition.”He added that the opposition parties “do not hate anybody or oppose nobody. But we oppose injustice, poverty, and bad governance. We also oppose anyone in power whose activities create condition that allows corruption, injustice, poverty, unemployment and insecurity to lives to thrive."“Whether they like it or not, we shall always continue to oppose them for those things. Our overriding mission is to gain powers at the national level from those that are there and make progressive change that the party in government has not been able to achieve,” Tinubu explained.

Tinubu, who was the Chief Presenter, said the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had been warned several times against pervasive rots and injustice in the country, but had refused to heed the call, noting that the ruling party needed to go. "It is time for the ruling party to go because the storm is here already,” he said. He explained that Nigeria “has witnessed their empty history. Only three days ago, the US Department of State in its annual country report identifies pervasive impunity and corruption as the hallmark of the President Goodluck Jonathan's administration. Impunity remains a reference at all levels of government.“That is what the state department said. The opposition has consistently passed the same message about this government. It is pitiable to see presidential aides trying to tell a different story. They embellish facts. Where there is none, they attack the massagers rather than heed the message”, he said. He, therefore, likened the APC to a raging storm, which he said, “is already in Nigeria.”

Culled from Thisday online