Daily Independent Online.
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Monday, June 14, 2004.
I have not dumped ANPP, Shinkafi insists
By Ikechukwu
Amaechi, Deputy Editor, Politics
and Ngozi Asoya, Special Projects Manager
A former presidential aspirant and chieftain of the All
Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), Alhaji Umar Shinkafi, has denied that he had quit
the party.
In recent times, the news of a strained
relationship between the former boss of the defunct Nigerian Security
Organisation (NSO) and running mate of Chief Olu Falae in the 1999 joint AD/APP
presidential ticket had been rife, leading to speculation in certain quarters
that he may have finally throw in the towel.
But speaking over the weekend in an
exclusive interview with Daily Independent in Kaduna, Shinkafi, said he has
not parted ways with the party.
Said he: “I would like to correct an
impression that I have dumped the party. No! I have not dumped the ANPP and I
am still a member of the party.”
Shinkafi said those who insinuated that he
quit the ANPP may have misconstrued his decision to maintain a low profile as
an indication that he has turned his back on the party he was a founding
member. “What I have said is that in my psychology, I would be more
useful to the party, for now, as a floor member,” he said. Shinkafi said
because of that, he has decided to quit his membership of the ANPP board of
trustee and national executive council, arguing that he needed neither of the
two organs to contribute his quota to the development of the party.
Citing the examples of past American leaders who he claimed
contributed to the development of their political parties and country in
general as ordinary members, Shinkafi said: “So much has happened and is
happening that I have to disengage from these two institutions of the
leadership of the party (BOT and NEC). Floor membership is a potent, weapon of
contribution in any political arrangement you don’t need to belong to the
BOT or NEC to contribute.
“Ronald Reagan of blessed memory was
a floor member of the Republican Party, so was Abraham Lincoln, so was more
recently, Bill Clinton, so was Eisenhower. In fact the latter was even drafted
on the eve of the convention. So all these business of Board of Trustees is not
what makes the fun and glamour of politics. The fun is to assist in producing a
virile and effective party, whether in or out of the board.”
Shinkafi also debunked allegation that he
dumped the party as a protest against the emergence of General Muhammadu Buhari
as the party’s candidate in the 2003 presidential election, saying the
allegation was “very unfair.”
Shinkafi said if he had wanted, he could have worked for a
ticket that would thrown up a southern aspirant with him as the running mate, a
ticket he said may have been “more electable,” but chose not to
because of Buhari.
“I played a very critical and central
role in crafting the consensus arrangement that produced Buhari as the
candidate to form a ticket… by my own reading of the convention is to
make sacrifice because I already had leadership thrust upon me and it would not
be decent if I had turned into a contestant under that circumstance,” he
said.
