By Sola Imoru, John Alechenu and Musikilu Mojeed
Published: Sunday, 4 Feb 2007

A source in Abuja, who spoke in confidence with one of our correspondents, said INEC was seeking legal advice on whether to disqualify Abubakar or not.

The Peoples Democratic Party had petitioned the commission, asking it to disqualify Abubakar from the April 21 presidential poll.

The party based its petition on the alleged indictment of the vice-president by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and an Administrative Panel of Inquiry over the management of the funds of the Petroleum Technology Development Fund.

But when Abubakar appeared before the electoral body on January 23, 2007 for the verification of his credentials, he submitted a counter-petition asking INEC to disregard the petition of PDP.

He urged the electoral commission to clear him for the presidential election.

The Chairman of the commission, Prof Maurice Iwu, however, said that INEC would release a report on the outcome of the exercise on February 5, 2007.

A source in the commission, however, told one of our correspondents on Sunday that the report of the verification was not ready.

He said INEC was in a dilemma over what to do with Abubakar and was seeking independent legal opinion on the matter.

The source said, ”I can confirm to you that the result of the verification is not ready. We are still considering the petitions against some candidates.

“You know the PDP wrote a petition against the vice-president. We are yet to take a decision on the petition. Apart from asking our legal unit to give us advice on the matter, we are also seeking advice from legal experts outside the commission.

”We do not want to be arbitrary in whatever decision we eventually take. We want to be sure that whatever we do is constitutional.”

When contacted on Sunday, INEC‘s National Commissioner in charge of Political Party Monitoring, Dr. Ishmael Igbani, confirmed that the commission was yet to take a decision on the vice-president.

He also said the report of the verification was not ready.

He said, ”We are yet to take a decision on the petitions we received against the vice-president and some other candidates.

“For us to take a final decision, all the national commissioners must be present. But for now, some of them have travelled abroad. I just came back from South Africa too.

“But I am sure we will meet this week. Once we take a decision, we will pass our report to the political parties.”

Despite INEC’s legal dilemma over his fate, the vice-president on Sunday said that incumbency factor was not a threat to his presidential ambition.

Abubakar, who spoke at a breakfast session with journalists in Kano State Government House, said if the April poll was free and fair, the ruling PDP could be defeated.

He said, ”Please, gentlemen of the Press, remove this from your head. I told you one of the main objectives of this alliance is to work together to enlighten Nigerians to protect their votes and to stop the PDP from stealing their votes.

“Mobilise Nigerians; don‘t ever believe in your mind that an incumbent government cannot lose elections. I have on many occasions informed you on how lesser African countries have changed governments.

“Our immediate neighbour here is Benin Republic. The president of the country, Mathew Kerekou, was in power for almost 30 years – from military to a democratically elected president.

“He had all the instruments of power and incumbency. He lost not even to a political party but to an independent candidate who had no political platform. He lost an election to that candidate.

“I gave an example of Ghana. You know Rawlings was in power for almost 20 years and as powerful as Rawlings was, he lost to an opposition, which is today in power in Ghana.

“Please for God‘s sake, if Benin can do it, Ghana can do it, Senegal can do it, Zambia can do it, Mali can do it.

“Konare, who is today the chairman of the AU Commission, also lost an election to an opposition party in Mali. Now for God‘s sake, what should stop us from doing so in Nigeria?

“Didn‘t you throw out former Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso and bring in Mallam Shekarau here (in Kano)? Kwankwaso belonged to a ruling party. He had the police; he had the SSS; he had everybody to support him.”

He accused the Federal Government of mismanaging the funds earmarked for projects, saying that an AC-controlled Federal Government would do things differently.

He said, ”In the first four years of this administration, it had been said that this administration had awarded contracts for road construction and so on and so forth, more than N300b.

“Up till today, this construction has not been completed. Not a single road that I am aware of did either the President or anyone else go to inaugurate. Where is this money?

“It is the belief of the AC that they can provide a better alternative by making sure that projects are conceived and implemented within budgetary provisions and within appropriated years.”

He blamed President Olusegun Obasanjo for the epileptic power supply in the country.

He added that the President ignored his advice that the nation should build captive power stations in order to address outage in the country.

“He said, ”For eight years now, we have been battling with the issue of power. Let me tell you a story. In the year 2000, I went to the President and said, ‘Look, Mr. President, we have so many sources of energy in this country. We have hydro, we have thermal, we have coal, name it, and all these are sources of power. In every part of the country, power has been provided by nature. Why can‘t we build captive power stations?’

“He asked, ‘What do you mean by captive stations?‘ I said, ‘Meaning that you go to a location like Kano area, we have so many rivers, and we have so many waters. You can build a medium-size power plant that can generate maybe 25 to 30 mega- watts which will give Kano all the power it needs.

“Then you move to another parts of the country. If it is coal they have, you use it to build another power station.‘ I gave him the example of President Ramos of Philippines.”

“The president said, ‘Well, I will look into that.‘ But the minister said, ‘Eh, you know if we rehabilitate NEPA and the existing power stations, we will have light.‘ I said if we rehabilitated the stations, what we were going to have would not guarantee because these power stations were so old that they would not last us two years before they broke down again.

“We pumped in $500m in rehabilitating those power stations. Exactly two years after, they all collapsed. It wasn‘t until last year that he said, ‘VP, why didn‘t you force me to implement this plan you told me?

“I said, ‘Mr. President, how can I force you? I am only an adviser.’

“We now came back to the same issue of trying to build captive power stations. But again, we made a tactical error there. All the power stations that we are now currently building are based on gas.

“What happens if the militants blow up all the gas lines? Which means there will also be no power? Instead of us to diversify the power generating system, we have now concentrated all the seven power stations we are building in the gas supplying areas where there is no stability of gas.”

Abubakar accused the PDP of bastardising our democracy and dragging the nation into a one-party state.

He, therefore, urged Nigerians to vote out the PDP.

He said, ”Allowing the ruling party to win elections again will amount to institutionalising dictatorship and one party rule in this country and is a recipe for chaos. It is a recipe for instability, and it is a recipe for underdevelopment. We can‘t afford to do that. Now, how do we do it?

“That is why we initiated the alliance talk.”

He said, ”The alliance talk is not about one man stepping down for the other. The alliance objectives are three. Unfortunately, the media has continued to narrow it down to one person stepping down for the other.

“Let me tell you three main objectives why we went into alliance, not only ANPP/AC but other parties. One is to make sure that the forth-coming elections are free, fair and credible.

“The second objective is to make sure that those who are in government now who do not want to go by institutionalising one party system, one-party rule, one-party dictatorship are forced to go by the wishes of the people.

“The third, how then do we make sure that we create an environment at the various levels of elections whether at the state Assembly; at the National Assembly; at the governorship and presidential levels; how we can harmonise or support consensus candidates so that we beat the ruling party.

”So, if you are talking about only the third aspect, the third objective, without achieving the first two objectives, the third one is not even realisable. Just don‘t talk about it, and forget it.”