Why young presidential candidates’ alliance failed, by SNP candidate

Presidential Candidate of Sustainable National Party of Nigeria (SNP), Ahmed Buhari, has explained why Presidential Aspirants Coming Together (PACT) could not achieve tangible results.

Speaking with The Guardian, Buhari who was an aspirant in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) said he was a member of PACT before he pulled out, because the group failed due to high self-esteem among the aspirants.He said when the Not-Too-Young-To-Run-Bill was signed, young presidential aspirants came together to form PACT, a coalition where it was agreed that a consensus candidate would emerge.

The candidate disclosed that at the initial stage, many presidential aspirants participated, but after some months, some of them left the group leaving behind Kingsley Moghalu, Fela Durotoye, Mathias Tsado, Ayodele Favor Oluwamuyiwa, Dare Fagbemi and Thomas-Wilson Ikubese.

He disclosed that in an election supervised by the former minister of education and now presidential candidate of Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN), Oby Ezekwesili, Durotoye had emerged as the consensus candidate.

However, the coalition did not produce much result as only few of the aspirants respected the outcome.Prof. Wole Soyinka, he added, had waged into the matter and met the young candidates to explore the possibility of an alliance, but many of the candidates did not attend the meeting.He stressed that a follow-up meeting scheduled for Abuja did not also hold amidst the insistence of the candidates to go their separate ways.

Buhari who hails from Niger State, said other aspirants failed to understand the present political realities as they deliberately jettisoned the north where the big parties had zoned their tickets.He explained that he personally reached out to all the aspirants who either reluctantly held the meetings with him, or saw no sense in his discussions with them.

The CEO of Skylar Incorporated, an ICT firm based in Lagos, said most of the aspirants did not consider the reality that a northerner would emerge as the next president, in line with the informal zoning arrangement.

He said: “Unfortunately, many people will still disagree with my political calculations, but those who have been on the field can clearly see that the expectations of the electorate is to have a northern president in 2019.“Very importantly, we must understand that the electorate must always be included in the political calculations. I have heard many people say it is unfortunate to think of picking a young northerner to contest against the two older contestants from the north: President Muhammadu Buhari and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.”He said however that this could have been possible if southern contenders had given their full support to break the system.