Ahead of 2019 election, 2 major political parties merge

macfranc007 June 21, 2018 Nigeria News today & Breaking news ▷ Read Naija news 24/7 Nnenna Ibeh

- Alliance for New Nigeria has been adopted by the Nigeria Intervention Movement as its political party

- The declaration was made in Lagos on Wednesday, June 20

- The movement said the pursuit of personal interests by political leaders had continued to ensure that little or no governance was going on in Nigeria

Two political parties have merged in preparation for the scheduled 2019 general elections in Nigeria.

The Nigeria Intervention Movement on Wednesday, June 20, adopted the Alliance for New Nigeria as its political party.

A statement by the national co-chairmen of NIM, Olisa Agbakoba and Abduljalil Tafawa-Balewa, said the organisation made the decision in Lagos on Wednesday.

The movement's chairmen said majority of Nigerians were overwhelmed by the “extant quality of politics” going on in Nigeria as manifested by reckless pursuits of self-serving and exploitative politics of the entrenched political class.

They said the pursuit of personal interests by political leaders had continued to ensure that little or no governance was going on in Nigeria.

“What we continue to have instead is that recycled and spent forces, who form the entrenched power in Nigeria, continue to massage their bloated ego and greed for our common resources. But for us in NIM, the whole essence of political leadership and government is the welfare and well-being of the citizenry.

"However, what has become notoriously self-evident in our circumstance instead is the increasing impoverishment and pauperisation of the generality of our citizenry compounded by general insecurity, deepening ethnoreligious animosity, which have continuously tended to push our fragile unity to the precipice, endangering our more resourceful and beneficial commonality.

"It is against this debilitating background and the need to restore hope back to Nigerians that the NIM was birthed on November 28, 2017, in Abuja by a new breed of leaders of conscience towards breathing a new life of sustainable popular constitutional democracy and good governance trajectory that will engender a new Nigeria that works for all Nigerians," the chairmen said.

The movement said it concluded that political parties were crucial pillars for nurturing popular democracy and good governance in any society.

It added that all the political parties had the rare privilege of superintending over the polity individually and collectively failed in delivering popular constitutional democracy as well as good governance.

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Meanwhile, NAIJ.com previously reported that Agbakoba had said that declaring June 12 as the new date for the celebration of Democracy Day in Nigeria was illegal.

The senior lawyer, however, said he would not challenge the president's decision because it is a popular declaration. He also said what is important in Nigeria is that there is a declaration that is popular; so, that is how we will take it.

TODAY’S GIST: Democracy Day! What is There to Celebrate? - Nigerians Lament on NAIJ.com TV