1998 election: AD did not qualify as a party – Gen Abdulsalam
The former Head of State, Gen. Abdulsalam Abubakar has disclosed that the Alliance for Democratic AD in 1998 did not meet the criteria to be registered as a political party.
Abubakar disclosed while answering questions on a Daily Trust TV.
When asked that close allies of his, General Babangida and General Gusau seem to have been involved in this PDP arrangement and that is why it is assumed he would be in the know and probably help here and there with the situation.
His response was: “Of course I know the situation of the political parties; of course we had to intervene in one way or the other to give peace a chance. We put some conditions for the registration of political parties, in order to make peace reign we had to tinker with some of the conditions because categorically the AD did not qualify, it was only I think PDP or APP that qualified to be registered as political parties.
“But if we had not done that we would still not be out of the woods. There was this agitation from the South West that they have been shortchanged and so on and so forth, so we said look, what we are trying to do is bring peace, no laws are sacrosanct, let’s see how we can tinker.
“So we tinkered and allowed the AD to be registered and thereby we were able to placate another area where there will be unrest and accusations; so we did.
“Now if in the process of making political parties, people are jockeying here and there, please take my administration out of this tinkering. We didn’t know anything, we did not say look make A, B, C, D the presidential candidate, it is an issue between the political parties.
“If as you have said Babangida, Aliyu Gusau have played a role, that must be a role they were playing with the political parties because they became members of political parties”, he explained.
