The Action Congress on Wednesday alleged that the violence and protests that have trailed last Saturday�s governorship and House of Assembly elections were part of a plot by President Olusegun Obasanjo to declare a state of emergency in the country and extend his tenure.
The party also said its National Executive Committee would meet to consider whether its candidates should withdraw from the April 21 presidential election.
Briefing journalists in Abuja, the National Chairman of the party, Chief Bisi Akande, accused Obasanjo and the Peoples Democratic Party of orchestrated chaos in some parts of the country to justify plans to declare a state of emergency and prolong the president�s tenure.
Akande said, �It is, therefore, clear that the crisis enveloping the country today are deliberately created to set the stage for Obasanjo to declare a state of emergency so that he can continue to rule an unwilling people.
�General Obasanjo is likely to take further steps to worsen the crisis so that it would be unmanageable. He would then use it as a ploy to justify such a declaration and try to recall the National Assembly to ratify it knowing fully well that most of the members would be busy with their re-election efforts.
�Under the cover of the state of emergency he would then unilaterally amend the constitution to enable him to rule for life.�
The AC chairman also alleged that the President was planning to foist a one-party rule on Nigeria.
�The scenario we have painted above may seem far-fetched, but that will be only to those who have not followed the President�s antecedents. Gen. Obasanjo is a firm believer in a one-party state, and he has canvassed this in his writings through the years.
�He even once sent a delegation to Egypt to understudy the workings of a one-party state, even though that country has started opening up to multi-party democracy. For him, it is either a one-party dictatorship or a military rule,� he said.
�He has said that the word �opposition� does not exist in his own limited understanding of African traditional politics. �Opposition�, he declared to our horror, is the same as enmity.
He vowed that his party had �resolved to stop, through all legal means, any attempt to truncate the Nigerian Project� while also urging �other political parties not to be carried away by the allocation of a few seats or states to them, and to join us in this epic battle for the survival of our democracy.�
�We do not believe that INEC can conduct credible election on Saturday. It seems to have been programmed by the Presidency and the PDP to fail the Nigerian people and kill this democracy.�
He praised the judiciary for making courageous pronouncements �that have helped to pull Nigeria back from the brink several times� and Nigerians �for resisting the move to steal their votes.�