CPC Backs Buhari's 2015 Presidential Ambition

SAN FRANCISCO, April 14, (THEWILL) - The Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), one of the two leading opposition parties in the country, on Saturday declared full support for the recently revealed ambition of its national Leader and perennial presidential aspirant, General Muhamadu Buhari, to contest the 2015 presidential election.

Buhari, who also ran on the party’s ticket for presidential election in 2011, declared his intention to take another shot at the presidency while addressing party supporters in Kaduna on Thursday.

“I am still in until the polity is sanitised and people enjoy the fruits of democracy at all levels of government,” declared Buhari, who also contested in 2007, losing to the late Umaru Musa Yar’adua of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in an election internationally acclaimed to be fraught with irregularities.

In a statement signed by its national publicity secretary, Engineer Rotimi Fashakin, CPC on Saturday publicly expressed its position on Thursday’s declaration of intent by the erstwhile military ruler, saying it will equally consider merger propositions from other political parties.

Admitting that General Buhari had last year, after the 2011 presidential election, foreclosed the possibility of contesting future elections, CPC argued that its leader’s rescission is predicated on “the leadership deficit and the truncation of the hope of the common man through the pervasive injustice in the land.”

In fact, it claimed to have put “immense pressure on General Buhari to rescind his earlier stance on Nigeria’s tempestuous politics,” adding that “the country has been tottering as a result of the besmirched reputation of an inept, dishonest and egregiously incompetent political leadership.”

It further confirmed that General Muhammadu Buhari “shall continue to actively participate in the politics under the Nigerian nation-space,” so long he is granted the “enablement” by God.

In a replica of the failed merger with the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in the build-up to the 2011 general selections, ACN expressed readiness to merge with some political parties ahead of 2015, saying it is “in alliance and possible merger talks with other progressive coalition partners in order to give true meaning to democratic governance within the Nigerian polity.”

But it refused to name the concerned parties. “It is our considered opinion that it would be rather preemptive to speculate at this time what the choice of these coalition partners shall be,” it insisted.