•Bows to pressure •Holds marathon meetings with think-tanks in Kano, Kaduna, Minna, Lagos

05 December 2010

The consensus approach by the north for the 2011 Presidential election may have cracked after all, as indications are now rife that General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida is set to re-new his ambition to run in the election, this time on a broad-based platform by political parties.

Indications to this effect emerged last night in Minna following a meeting he held with members of his think-tank who earnestly concluded that he should run against all odds.

Sunday Tribune learnt that the Campaign Organisation of IBB is still intact, although not all members of the Campaign Organisation attended the Minna meeting, just as indications are rife that beginning from next week, a new life would be injected into the organisation to make it take off with full steam.

The Northern Leaders Political Forum led by Mallam Adamu Ciroma had settled for Atiku as the Consensus Candidate of the North, and had rallied the campaign organisations of General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, General Aliyu Gusau and Bukola Saraki to support him.

Before the emergence of Atiku as consensus candidate for the North, all the principal presidential candidates in PDP had pledged to support the choice of the northern leaders to confront President Goodluck Jonathan in the 2011 election.

Since the day Atiku was announced as the consensus candidate in line with the design by the Northern leaders, Babangida, Sunday Tribune can report had been under intense pressure to dump the consensus arrangement and dare the next presidential election.

Some northern leaders said to be in disagreement with the attitude of the Ciroma-led Northern Leaders Forum had specifically visited Babangida in Minna and Abuja where they mounted pressure on him to run in the next election, promising to assist in mobilising the grassroots support for him not only in the North but in other geo-poltical zones of the federation where they have traditional allies.

The northern leaders were said to have facilitated the meeting of his think-tanks in Minna last Friday, where they resolved to conclude on the decision to make Babangida run.

The meeting with IBB was said to have run through the night where salient political issues relating with his interest in 2011 and other political strategies for making him attain the dream were said to have been discussed exhaustively with conclusions reached.

Before the Minna meeting, similar meetings had held in Kano, Kaduna and Lagos where his supporters arrived at a common consensus in each of the meeting that IBB should run.

Long before now, a political party, the National Democratic Party (NDP) had held its National Convention and announced that it had adopted IBB as its own presidential candidate, and even liberalised its option on IBB by stating that it would support any political party that would present him as its presidential candidate.

There are indications that IBB would eventually contest the 2011 presidential election on a wider platform to be offered by a coalition of political parties as talks among the parties are said to have reached top gear at weekend.

The National Chairman of NDP, Prince Chudi Chukwani, who was a party to one of the meetings told Sunday Tribune that IBB had crossed the rubicon of decision on whether or not to contest.

He said IBB has been a General who cannot be intimidated by issues or events, contending that the former Nigerian military president was ready to enter into the presidential ring for the 2011 election having critically surveyed the ground and obtained re-assurances.

Chukwuani said the unfolding events in the next couple of days and weeks would convince Nigerians and his supporters nationwide that the resolve by IBB to contest and return to power in 2011 was not a fluke.

Also reacting, the Oyo State coordinator of the IBB Campaign Organisation, Alhaji Hazeem Gbolarumi confirmed to Sunday Tribune that the former military president was under intense pressure and might have decided to contest in the elections.

According to him, “IBB is a democrat and that was why he allowed the Ciroma committee to decide who should represent the North. But it is sad that the committee was not fair to him because they went beyond their briefs. They were not supposed to have voted, they were expected to brief the stakeholders at the end of their findings.”

He also stated that “IBB may have been put under pressure by his loyalists because of several allegations against the committee.”

“All these put together, Gbolarumi stressed “were enough to make IBB supporters to pile pressure on him to jettison the consensus deal and contest the presidential election.”

Another Hausa leader based in Ibadan, confided in Sunday Tribune that General Babangida may have decided to take his political destiny in his hands and has been telling his associates across the states that “what will be will be and in politics, anything can happen”, a statement that is seen as a veiled reference to his determination to run against the consensus deal.