AN organization to unseat President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019 general election was officially launched in Abuja yesterday.
Named ‘Coalition for Nigeria Movement’, the group has been endorsed by former President Olusegun Obasanjo in his last week’s highly critical epistle he wrote to the president.
Obasanjo who had accused the president of underperformance in his letter advised him not to seek reelection in the coming presidential poll
He had called for the establishment of a third force to unseat the present administration while noting that the two political parties in the country have failed Nigerians.
“We need a Coalition for Nigeria. Such a Movement at this juncture needs not be a political party but one to which all well-meaning Nigerians can belong. That Movement must be a coalition for democracy, good governance, social and economic wellbeing and progress; a coalition to salvage and redeem our country,” Obasanjo said last week.
The former leader, however, was conspicuously absent from yesterday’s event, even though in his letter he had stated: “You can count on me with such a Movemen, I will gladly join such a Movement when one is established as Coalition for Nigeria, taking Nigeria to the height God has created it to be.”
Kehinde Akinyemi, his spokesman said Obasanjo was absent because he returned to Nigeria late from Addis-Ababa, Ethiopia where he attended the AU summit.
IGBERE TV gathered that only few recognisable faces turned up at the event.
In attendance were APC Board of Trustees member, Buba Galadima, former governor of Osun State and Chairman, Board of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Olagunsoye Oyinlola, former PDP National Chairman, Amodu Ali and former governor of Cross River State, Donald Duke.
The convener, Oyinlola, an ally of Obasanjo, said the movement for now is not a political party.
“To say that we are legitimising Obasanjo’s legacy is wrong. I think what he has done is stir us from slumber. Nobody can fault Obasanjo’s letter. We are not a political party for now. Our aim is to help Nigerians take the country from those who run it as business. It is not the destiny of Nigeria to remain in crisis and in doldrums,” he said.
Meanwhile, an elder statesman and renowned constitutional lawyer, Prof. Nwabueze, yesterday, called for a change of leadership in the nation.
In a letter entitled: ‘Nigeria Under President Buhari Is Categorised As A Failed State By An Internationally Recognised Agency’, he said: “Buhari must be stopped before he pushes Nigeria further down the rank of the worst failed states to which Zaire, under Mobutu, had been reduced.
“God forbid that he (Buhari) should ever get a second term. Or Nigeria will cease to exist, except in the sense in which Zaire, under Mobutu, existed. That is as an idea without an existential content; a state existing only in name or on the map as a mere geographical expression.”
