Daily Independent Online.
*
Wednesday, June 16, 2004.
Balarabe urges broad-based progressive coalition
By Bolaji Adepegba
Senior Correspondent, Lagos
The leader of the Conference of Nigerian Political
Parties (CNPP) and Chairman of the Nigerians United for Democracy (NUD), Alhaji
Balarabe Musa, has said that ethnicising the struggle for the actualisation of
June 12 was an unnecessary mistake that should not be allowed to occur again.
Balarabe, who said this in Lagos at the celebration
of the anniversary of the June 12 struggle organised by the Democratic
Sustenance Initiative, said the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), which
was the arrowhead of the struggle, was formed without proper countrywide
consultation.
He recalled that when the coalition was being formed,
his leader, the late Alhaji Lawan Dambazau, was invited but he did not like
what he met at its first meeting. According to him, Dambazu was advised against
making it public.
He told the story of how he accidentally attended the
second meeting of the coalition in company of the late winner of the June 12
1993 presidential election, Bashorun Moshood Abiola.
According to him, progressive elements in the North
got wind of the plan of the military government of the time to launch a
diplomatic campaign against the de-annulment of the election. They therefore
moved to counter this move first by consulting in the country before
determining how to handle the situation. They therefore visited Abiola in Lagos
on how to give him the situation report on the matter. It was during this
meeting that Abiola told him and two other politicians, Jolly Tanko Yussuf and
Muhammadu Arzika, that a group had invited him (Abiola) to a meeting to which
he would love them (his visitors) to come along.
He said that meeting turned out to be the second
meeting of NADECO and it was held somewhere at Yaba in Lagos.
Musa revealed that on arrival at the meeting, they
found out that of the 68 people in attendance, 50 were from the Southwest.
“To our dismay, when we asked them why we were
not invited to such a movement, somebody in the meeting told us: ‘Well go
to the North and form your own NADECO,’” he said.
Balarabe said that they did not pick offence in this
but rather went up North to organise and form a ‘Northern NADECO’
but this time inviting the Southern elements.
He said that on the day of the meeting, those from
NADECO who came to meet with them in Kaduna did not even wait for the meeting
to begin before they left.
He therefore cautioned against any fresh progressive
action based on ethnic sentiments.
“I have never associated myself with any
regional organisation,” he said.
