The pan-Yoruba socio-cultural organisation, Afenifere, has taken the spokesman of the Buhari 2019 Campaign Organisation, Mr. Festus Keyamo, to the cleaners.
Afenifere, in a riposte to a comment by Keyamo that the Coalition of United Political Parties “are briefcase parties”, said the one-time Lagos vociferous lawyer is “a political novice who doesn’t know the dynamics of power.”
Replying Keyamo on behalf of Afenifere, its spokesman, Comrade Yinka Odumakin, said, “When a sinking government and his agents begin to talk like that, it clearly shows that they are under pressure and on the way out.
Odumakin: What Keyamo said can be likened to arrogance of power. The age-long wisdom says ‘pride goes before a fall’. Except they want to write results of the 2019 general elections, how will the APC return to power? Where will Buhari and APC get votes in 2019?
“Keyamo doesn’t know anything about politics. He doesn’t even have the capacity to call people names. He doesn’t know what he is saying.”
Last week, the Peoples Democratic Party, Reformed All Progressives Congress, Social Democratic Party and 36 other political parties had signed a Memorandum of Understanding in Abuja to oust the All Progressives Congress in 2019.
On the strength of the MoU, the parties and groups came together as CUPP.
But Keyamo sneered at the Coalition, describing it as “pure deceit and a laughable desperation.”
He said, “Some political parties made up of just husbands and wives have signed an MoU with the PDP to form a ‘grand coalition’ against President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019. This is pure deceit. PDP has only succeeded in registering a few more members into its fold.
“It’s not a ‘grand coalition’. It’s just membership drive. Nobody is deceived. In 2013, four major parties with elected governors and parliamentarians fused into one whole.
“The comedy we are seeing now is that PDP has sucked in those ‘briefcase’ parties who are going to drop their identities and support a PDP candidate. It’s a laughable desperation.
“Let me remind Nigerians how grand coalitions are formed into one big party. They ought to hold their individual conventions. They have to dissolve their individual executive committees in a national convention. They have to pass a resolution in those national conventions to go into a merger.
“It’s only the national convention that can approve the merger of all of those 37 or so political parties. It is after the approval of those mergers that they can go into talks with other parties.
“So, what they have done, what has happened in Abuja is a non-event. Nothing is going on because at the end of the day, what will happen is that the other parties are being deceived. They will finally field what is called a PDP candidate. There will be no other candidate. Is that what they want? Is that what the other parties want?”
But Odumakin too fired back, saying, “What Keyamo said can be likened to arrogance of power. The age-long wisdom says ‘pride goes before a fall’. Except they want to write results of the 2019 general elections, how will the APC return to power? Where will Buhari and APC get votes in 2019?
“In South-South, South-East, South-West or Middle Belt? Even in the North-East, where will the votes come from? Buhari is from Katsina, which is in North-West. APC in North-West, even in his own native Katsina, has been balkanised.
Keyamo: Some political parties made up of just husbands and wives have signed an MoU with the PDP to form a ‘grand coalition’ against President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019. This is pure deceit. PDP has only succeeded in registering a few more members into its fold
“All the prominent APC leaders in all these zones have left or are on their way out. So, where are they going to get votes? By the time they realise that Nigerians are no longer with them, it will be too late.
“I want to tell Keyamo that people in CUPP are patriots who want the best for this country. Nigeria must be rescued from the hands of Buhari, APC and the like of Keyamo.”
