THE Democratic Front for a Peoples Federation (DFPF), yesterday declared its support for the candidature of Malam Nuhu Ribadu of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in the race for the Presidency in the April elections.

In a communiqué issued by the party’s Directorate of Publicity after an emergency meeting by its executive in Abuja, the DFPF declared: “Following a spirited debate on the credentials, track records, and potential of all the candidates for the position of presidency, the Democratic Front has made its choice, and now declares its support for the candidacy of Mr. Nuhu Ribadu.

The party said it took this decision “with a deep sense of responsibility to the nation, and to the generation that the failed ones have produced to mop up their failures, betrayals, egocentrism and waste of one historic opportunity after another. The efforts of these ‘chosen’ to replicate themselves in the coming elections through sponsored surrogates must be countered with all possible resources and strategic thinking.

“We shall join hands with other progressives and mobilise the resources of the party, material, moral, and organisational, towards the attainment of this goal in the coming critical elections for the nation.”

Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, founded the DFPF.




Reviewing recent events in the country, the party “observed with immense satisfaction a political development that has taken place within the current ‘ruling party’ of the nation, a development that finally put paid to the deceptive and retrogressive zoning policies that the party has deviously attempted to foist on the nation as a constitutional provision.”

It added: “While this by no means spells the emergence of a genuine democratic disposition, it nonetheless brings the nation a small step closer to the embrace of due democratic practice, enabling choices to be made on merit, rather than through regional, sectarian opportunism and blackmail.”

The Democratic Front took note of recent political developments in North Africa and the Middle East, stressing the import for “false” democracies across the world, especially in Africa.

It wrote: “First Tunisia, then Egypt, rumblings in Jordan, next? The tide of freedom and justice cannot be held back forever. Sooner or later the dam will burst, and the people will come into their own.

“It is the turn of open dictatorship today, tomorrow it may be the turn of false democracy, where the very principles of democracy are prostituted, indeed pressed into the service of dictatorship, cronyism, consensual thievery and massive exploitation.

“Nigeria is a prime example. A nation where a microcosmic minority, having largely manipulated itself into office through degraded electoral means, proceed to engorge over a third of a nation’s annual expenditure, using the same extorted resources to perpetuate themselves in arrogance and alienation, is a contradiction of all democratic definitions.”

The party charged “the electorate to study the DFPF manifesto in detail, educate itself about its provisions, send questions and comments through the party website, and engage in a sincere dialogue that has been denied the Nigerian citizens since its declaration of Independence.”