(ACF), Chief Sunday Awoniyi, said Saturday that the organisation would not go out of its way to endorse a candidate for the plum post. He declared in Lokoja that the organisation would not dabble into the business of producing the nation’s president and other elective offices in 2007, warning that the organisation would be completely destroyed if it did so.
Speaking at a grand civic reception organised by the Kogi State Government and the state chapter of the ACF in his honour as the new Chairman of the socio-cultural umbrella organisation for the North, Chief Awoniyi said: "It is the responsibility of each political party to field candidates for elective offices without any interference from ACF.
"ACF members belong to different political parties in which they hold high offices. A good number of our members belong to no political pates at all. Once ACF begins to poke its nose into the electoral affairs of political parties, it will be destroyed. It will not survive our Nigerian kind of politics."
Awoniyi, however, said: "It is very much the business of the ACF to help and encourage constructively, political leaders and office holders at local, state and federal levels to pursue policies and programmes consistent with the long term benefit of our people and the survival and development of our country.
"We shall continue to commend and encourage our executives at various levels when they perform well for the benefit of the common man. By the same token, we shall continue to point out constructively and knowledgeably actions or policies that go against good governance and the interest of the people or harmful to the well-being of our country.
"In addition, ACF has a duty to propagate to our people and to all our political parties, the criteria that should guide them for selecting candidates for political offices at all levels."
These, according to him, include: "commitment to one Nigeria, honesty and integrity, justice to all Nigerians and all parts of Nigeria, belief in the democratic ideals enshrined in our constitution, transparency, vision, experience, acceptability, and ability to manage public affairs through delegation of responsibilities to capable people an taking ultimate responsibility for their actions."
Frowns at electoral malpractices
Awoniyi also said ACF would continue to insist on the freeness, fairness and transparency of elections in the country, adding: "Voting is the highest act of democratic participation by the ordinary citizen; it is a weapon to reward good governance by re-election and to punish poor performance by denying re-election.
"We shall continue to proclaim that it is evil and destructive of the tranquility of the polity to pollute the electoral process by the obscene use of money, and the abuse of the apparatus of state, especially security agencies, electoral institutions and their officials, and the corrupt use of party machinery and hierarchy to award electoral victories to those who did not win and deprive those who won their victories.
"Any administration founded on that kind of victory is illegitimate. It is not blessed. It is cursed from above and will not prosper. It is ill gotten. Sweet it may be at the beginning; in the end it will turn sour and leave a bitter taste in the mouth. Today, we witness helplessly, the terrible harvest of electoral malpractices in Anambra and Plateau States. Unfortunately, we all suffer for it—the guilty and the innocent alike."
