Chief Bisi Akande! That committee recommended that Afenifere should direct the formation of a new political party - a broad-based party - using the AD as arrowhead. That is the Akande committee's recommendation in writing. So, he is now arguing against what he himself recommended".
Consequently, on the emergence of new parties he predicted that by the end of 2005 two or three major political parties would emerge, he said, "I expect the PDP to break up. At my book launch, all the progressives present said they have to come together, that the alignment must start now. There was a mistake in 1998 that everybody should belong to whatever party he wanted to belong to in his own area. That the paramount thing, then, was to get the military to depart and after they had gone out, we would an established democracy. The time to start the re-alignment is now. So, I believe the time for realignment for re-emergence of party-based ideology and principles is now".
The AD itself, according to him, have repeatedly said that there is need to reach out to other progressives. While he was short of saying outrigthly that the "reaching out to other progressives may translate into forming a new political party as he tacitly said, "don't pre-judge the end of the process", he pointed out that: "In 1999, the AD and the then APP had an alliance and I ran on the platform of that alliance. There could be merger, there could be anything at this stage; anything is possible. The AD can come under a different name, it can merge, it can be in alliance, it can be anything, but we cannot continue like this and expect to provide any credible opposition to the PDP. That is the truth of the matter. We (progressive) should resolve our differences and form a credible alternative to the PDP".
Contending that AD was a child of circumstance, he said that the last transition from military to democratic rule, of Abdulsalam Abubakar, was rushed and the negotiation for forming parties took place hastily. The negotiating team abandoned the group that later became PDP; they went to APP and abandoned later it. And then in the last moment, they formed a party (AD). His words: "Our traditional stronghold, the Southwest formed the bulk of its membership. That was what gave the impression that the AD was a sectional party - a Yoruba party. It was not conceived to be so.
We should be Nigeria's largest party today. But because some people wanted certain things, they sacrificed the party for themselves, they ended up in a corner where we are painted as a tribal party. As leaders of the progressive group, we wanted the loyal members of the movement, scattered all over the other parties, where they are ineffective and where most of them were used and dumped, to come under the AD. They are frustrated where they are. Hence in my book, I advocated that we should come together and offer a principled alternative to the PDP.
PDP is an opportunistic gang up for power. That's what I call it. I was a member of the group that metamorphosed into PDP. The G-34 was an opposition group to Abacha. It was not set up to be a party. It was all kinds of people who believed that Abacha must go. Then suddenly he died and we said, ok, let's become a party. A party must have defined goals and values that we share in common. It was not so and that is why we have this endless crisis in all the political parties".
In a statement credited to the Prince Dayo Adeyeye, national director of Publicity, Research and Statistics, loyal to the Akande-led group, accused the Afenifere of embarking on a hidden agenda meant to wipe out of existence so that it can form another political party. "The whole world must know that the real reason for that decision (to accord Akinfenwa-led group recognition) was to obliterate and kill the Alliance for Democracy in other to pave way for their hidden agenda to form a new party. It was not borne out of any altruistic or patriotic motive", the statement reportedly said.
Also, Falae declared the Lagos convention, on which the leadership of Akande is predicated, as an illegality that was obvious to everybody. Speaking on the Abuja convention he said: "In our view, the Abuja convention complied substantially with the provisions and guidelines of the party. Senator Akinfenwa on three, four, five times in the presence of Chief Akande told us, while we were mediating and Akande did not contradict him. He said 28 state delegates attended the Abuja convention. Out of these, 22 sent their full delegations to Abuja, about six divided their delegation between Lagos and Abuja. Two or three did not go to either Lagos or Abuja. Only about four went to the Lagos convention.
