ALHAJI Balarabe Musa, chairman of the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP) and leader of the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) insists that the opposition, in spite of all odds, will never be subdued.
The opposition has not been cowed. How can that be? It’s just not possible in a democracy even though what we have in place is a civilian government and not a democracy. The government of the PDP led by Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has been doing everything it could to make sure that the opposition no longer exists under him but he can’t succeed.
I am sure that it must have been very clear to him (Obasanjo) and his party members that they are not winning. They are trying like I said earlier but they just can’t win no matter what they do. They can’t cage the opposition. Not at all. The opposition in this country today rather than being strangulated or allowing itself to be cowed, multiplies by the day.
The CNPP has remained in the forefront of the struggle to free the citizens of this country from the grip of the PDP regime and that’s why the CNPP was set up in the first place. You must recall that the CNPP is an umbrella body of political parties in this country that were cheated out of the 2003 elections by the PDP.
Now, we have the NLC which is another strong opposition organisation in the land and you know, of course, that the CNPP is strongly backing the NLC in its opposition to the increases in fuel prices. While the CNPP is fighting on the political front, labour is waging its own war on the economic front and both groups are supporting each other very well.
So, I see no reason why anybody can say that there is no opposition in the land. If the opposition is not there, the PDP and their government would have pocketed this country completely. I want to make it very clear in this interview that the CNPP which is the main opposition organisation since after the last general election can never allow anybody to emasculate it. We are in a democracy and democracy pre-supposes that people must, under the law of the land, have the freedom to express their own views about how the country is going to be run.
The opposition is not dead even with all the attempts to break the ranks of our members. You can see that the opposition expressed by the labour through strike actions has really made the government to go back on its attempt to increase the price of fuel beyond the reach of the ordinary people. Rather than the opposition ranks depleting, we are increasing everyday. We have consistently opposed them (PDP government) and we will continue to oppose them even in their attempt to outlaw the NLC. The CNPP has written to the legislators to throw out that bill.
