“Personally, I came to realise since 2007 that Nigerians believe that the only way to stabilise the system of multi-party democracy is for the opposition parties that have representatives right from councillors to the National Assembly to come together to deliver their constituencies democratically. This is the only way you can counter PDP’s enormous physical and material influence in the country,” he said.
On the crisis currently engulfing two of the parties involved in the merger process, All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) and CPC, Buhari said “though APGA has serious legal problems at the moment, one of its governors has declared for the APC and has attended our convention. He has the courage to come out and identify with the APC, but we have to be careful about APGA, because of the problem between the two factions which has ended up in court.”
Commenting on internal democracy in the party, he said “people are free to express their opinion because that is the beauty of democracy. But that won’t stop us from having the APC out of CPC, ACN, ANPP and others.”
On CPC, he said “Hanga is not a member of the CPC and there is no faction in the party. People can believe who they want to believe, because that is the beauty of democracy.
“Hanga happened to be the interim chairman of the CPC when it was registered in 2009 and we wanted to participate in the 2011 elections. The 2010 Electoral Act that was used for the 2011 elections did not come into effect until about five to six months to the election.
“He wanted to be the governor of Kano State, but by law, he cannot be chairman of the party and a governorship candidate in Kano State. So, he wrote a letter resigning as stipulated by the Electoral Act and handed over everything. So, if Hanga now says he has CPC registration document with him, then he must have stolen it and we are going to take him to court if he doesn’t return it.”
On the recent factionalisation of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF), Buhari described the situation as unfortunate and a setback to Nigeria’s democracy.
He said the governors’ forum was not constitutional and not a party affair, because they were supposed to come from all the parties.
According to him, “there is no constitutional law as far as I can see. So, why all these row about it. I watched the clip of the election which seems to have been conducted in a free and fair way. But then, Jang came and said he won the election when we saw visibly on the screen how they conducted the election.
“The man who presided over the election declared the result there and then. I was surprised how Jang emerged and said he was the one that won the election and proceeded to open his own secretariat. So, if 36 of them cannot conduct an election, Nigerians should begin to appreciate what we are in for when they are supposed to be conducting an election for over 140 million people by 2015.”
On his 2015 presidential ambition and the alleged rumbling it had caused in APC, Buhari said he was ready to sacrifice his ambition for the success of the party at the 2015 polls.
He said if the APC failed to give him the ticket, “I will remain in partisan politics and in the party and anyone the party picked as its candidate, I will support.”
On APC registration,Buhari said “by nature, I am an optimist. If I’m not an optimist, I will not attempt to contest the presidency three times and end up in the Supreme Court three times. I believe we are going to be registered.”
Speaking on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the 2015 elections, he said “we as APC are working together with some other parties and civil society groups to make suggestion for the amendment of the Electoral Act 2010 for electoral act 2014. I hope we won’t have to fight for anything. I hope we will just make suggestions according to law and it will be respected.”
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