News Report: Nigeria's Action Congress Party Hopes For A Coalition Government

The Action Congress Of Nigeria(ACN), Nigeria's main opposition party in the 2011 presidential election before the emergence of Buhari's Congress For Progressive Change(CPC) is presently hoping for a coalition government after the 2011 general elections with the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) as a senior partner, chidi opara reports have been informed by highly placed ACN insiders.

The ACN recovered three states, Edo, Ekiti and Osun from PDP through court verdicts. This, added to Lagos which it won in 2007, came up to four states.

The party scored a good political point when it elected as its presidential candidate for the 2011 election, the famous former Chairman of the Economic And Financial Crimes Commission(EFCC), Mr. Nuhu Ribadu.

The ACN according to these insiders had hoped to win the whole of the South-Western states with the influence of its stalwarts who are former chieftains of Afenifere, a hitherto dominant political pressure group in the South-West. The party's nomination of Ribadu, in the thinking of its national leaderhip was aimed at securing at least two of the zones in the North, while the initial plan to nominate Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Vice-president of World Bank as Ribadu's running mate which did not work for yet unknown reasons was supposed to give ACN a good chunk of the South-East votes. Dr. Okonjo-Iweala is a South-Easterner by Marriage.

chidi opara reports investigation however revealed that the Buhari influence in the North, which was wrongly thought to have diminished considerably due his travails in his former party, the All Nigeria Peoples' Party(ANPP), the retired General's master stroke in choosing famous Lagos based activist, Pastor Tunde Bakare as his running mate, the appointment of former Afenifere publicist, Mr. Yinka Odumakin as his spokesperson and the failure of ACN to pair Ribadu with a South-Easterner have relegated the party to a distant third position.

Analysts who spoke to chidi opara reports posit that in the event of a run-off election, it is most likely to be between President Goodluck Jonathan of PDP and Muhhamadu Buhari of CPC.

In the words of a high level ACN contact in Lagos, "unity government is our trump card. Buhari would not want to work with PDP and PDP would need a partner, so we are the likely choice."