I wish to express my profound appreciation for the privilege, which you have bestowed on me, of leading our great party, the African Democratic Congress, into the next elections as its Presidential Candidate. I am truly humbled and excited by this singular honour. We demonstrated that while democracy is being strangled and squashed by the ruling party and its oppressive and anti-democratic government, democracy is alive and well in the African Democratic Congress. In our party, members are allowed to express their views, to have ambitions and to contest for elective positions in a free, fair and transparent process. Our great party is a coalition built through hard work, immense sacrifices and compromises, guided by our determination to rescue our country’s democracy which is facing its greatest threat since the return to democratic rule in 1999. As I speak, virtually all opposition political parties in the country have leadership crisis engineered by the APC government, the INEC and elements in the judiciary. And opposition figures continue to be harassed and intimidated, including those languishing in detention, such as Mallam Nasir El-Rufai who distinguished himself as a public servant, including as a Minister and two-term Governor of Kaduna State. He has been in detention for three months despite court orders granting him bail. He has been denied the right to celebrate two important religious holidays with his family in addition to being denied the opportunity to be by his mother’s side as she took her last breath. All because he is a leading opposition figure! This kind of cruelty must stop. The government continues to harass, intimidate and coerce opposition politicians to join the APC using the security agencies as well as the agencies which were set up by a previous government to fight corruption. Under this government, once a person joins the APC, the harassment ceases and the charges against them magically disappear. This abuse of power must stop. Great care was taken to ensure that due diligence was done in the process of forming this coalition. Yet the government and the INEC continue to undermine it, even trying to deregister it. Let me warn that any further attempt to interfere in the affairs of the party by the Presidency, INEC and judiciary will be fiercely resisted. Enough is enough. I congratulate my fellow contestants for this ticket to represent our great party in the elections scheduled for early next year. I know that you are driven by your patriotism and commitment to a better Nigeria and improved life for our people. I know that, like me, you are deeply concerned about the rapid descent of our country into economic disaster, catastrophic insecurity, extreme nepotism, political intolerance and the drive towards a one-party state by the current government and its party. I thank you for your healthy participation in this democratic process. I must state at this juncture that this is not the time to celebrate. No one was defeated because we are one party and we all need to recognise the fierce urgency of the moment. Therefore, we have to unite, as we pledged before this process, to work to pull our country and our people out of the destructive grip of a corrupt, incompetent and polarising APC government. I thank the primary elections Committee for organising peaceful, free, fair and transparent primaries. I thank the various leadership organs of our party, the various stakeholders, and volunteers for their hard work and dedication and all our party members and supporters for their efforts, patience and conduct during the process. With the primaries behind us, the real hard work is about to begin. We have to prepare to campaign hard to win the next general elections in order to begin the difficult process of rescuing our country and its long-suffering people from this government.
