The Coalition of United Political Parties, CUPP, has revealed how it come up with a single Presidential candidate for the 2019 election.
Over 35 political parties had formed a coalition with the sole aim of getting President Muhammadu Buhari removed from office in 2019.
There were fears that confusion will arise among the political parties as regards which party will produce the presidential candidate.
But speaking with Punch, Head of the Media and Publicity Committee of the CUPP, Ikenga Ugochiyere, said that all the parties were free to conduct their primaries.
He explained that once that was done, CUPP would now step in to decide what happens next.
He said, “Once all the parties are through with their internal (presidential) primaries, the CUPP comes to life with the great task of adopting one of the platforms in the alliance as the grand coalition candidate.”
Asked if the presidential candidates that would emerge from the other political parties would agree to the arrangement, he said, “That was why we signed the MoU first. Out of over 40 parties one will fly the coalition’s flag.”
On whether the leaders of all the parties would not submit the names of winners of their presidential candidates to INEC, he said the “coalition is working on that aspect right now.”
He said that “the coalition was aware that only candidates whose names had been submitted to the commission could withdraw from the race, CUPP was already working on ‘a final road map’ on how to avoid running into a legal crisis on it.”
He added, “But membership opinion is high on the side of having the unveiling of the coalition standard bearer before the final date for submission to avoid the legal stress of withdrawal of candidature if all alliance members submit and want to pull it out.”
Speaking on why the coalition could not test its strength with the Osun State governorship election slated for September 22, he added that the members only agreed to work together for the presidential election.
“The MoU is very clear on the area of collaboration which is the presidential race but parties that wish to work together at the state level can go ahead and do so on their own terms,” he added.