Former dictator, General Ibrahim Babangida, may just be living on political life support and hanging to a thin thread of life still. The last may not have been heard of his’s plan for the April 21 presidential election, as presidential candidate of the National Democratic Party (NDP), Mr. Aliyu Habu-Fari, has declared he was only holding the party’s presidential ticket in trust for Babangida.
 Babangida still dreams |
Speaking with THISDAY, Mr. Habu-Fari, who picked, by special arrangement, the NDP presidential ticket at the party’s December 21, 2006 presidential nomination primaries, said review of strategies and options was still going on, in a bid to actualise the Babangida 2007 presidential ambition.
According to him, “NDP is ready for the scheduled general elections and the party is prepared to provide a hub for a coalition of parties for the actualisation of our take over of power on May 29, 2007.
“By the first two weeks of this month, we will commence mobilisation and electioneering. The problem really is not party based, because that has been taken care of, the problem is the election proper in which case the candidate will submit himself to acceptability test by the electorate.”
Asked if he would be the one to fly the party’s flag at the presidential elections, he said, “I am holding the ticket in trust for General Babangida, the candidate eventually could be me, and it could be him, depending on the outcome of on-going strategies and options review.
“The Electoral Act 2006 provides for substitution of candidates for the elections not later than February 14. I think this is even better than going through the rigours of nomination and /or election at the party’s convention.
“The Act does not state that the substitute should be nominated or elected. It does not state the process through which the person that should be brought in to substitute a candidate whose name has already been submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) should be picked.
“But for us in the NDP, we have taken care of this issue long time ago when we adopted Babangida as our preferred candidate for the presidential election and when we did that, it became apparent that the NDP had taken that decision at a properly called National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting in February 2005.”
He said that the former military president has vast political structures with which he could actualise his presidential plan, stressing that he (Babangida) had gone far in exploring various options open to him after he withdrew from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential nomination process.
Babangida, in a letter to President Olusegun Obasanjo, on his withdrawal, had said his decision was in deference to his forty-year-old friendship with General Aliyu Mohammed Gusau and his brotherhood with Governor Umar Yar’ Adua.
In the letter dated December 9, 2006, he had said, “Mr. President, I wish to inform you that I shall be exploring other options in due course to advance my commitment to democracy and the Nigerian nation”.
When THISDAY pressed Habu-Fari further what he would do in the event that Babangida does not come out to pick the ticket from him, he said: “I will go ahead to participate in the presidential election”, adding “This is not a new thing to me; I was a candidate under Option A4 on the platform of the defunct National Republican Convention (NRC)”.
He said he had the capacity to go round the nation to canvass support for the NDP, stressing that the support of Babangida for him and the party would translate into electoral fortune at the polls.
According to him, “His support will translate into electoral fortunes at the polls. He is popular and he belongs to the calibre of Nigerians with political influence”.
