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Our 'Movement' Different From Obasanjo’s Coalition- Agbakoba

Former president of Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, Olisa Agbakoba, (SAN) has said his movement, National Intervention Movement (NIM) is different from ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo’s Coalition for Nigeria Movement (CNM).

The Senior Advocate of Nigeria also noted that there are many ‘movements’ now being flagged off by prominent Nigerians.

He noted that if the ‘movements’ are in the good interest of Nigeria, he has no problems with them.

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“There’s no relation between both (NIM and CNM). Obasanjo’s own came much later. Obasanjo’s group came over maybe six months after ours had been established. We are not the same organization.

“The whole idea is that we should all be able to form a strong political movement that will make the 2019 elections viable, credible and fair and produce new political actors. There are so many movements, there is the NIM, the Tunde Bakare movement, there is the Oby Ezekwesili movement; there is that of Charlyboy.

“What is important is to work towards a common agenda. Whether we merge or not, is not the issue. The issue is that do we all agree that our political and economic condition is in a terrible state. And if so, what can we do about it.

“The fact is that Nigeria is not in good shape today and the second fact is how can we make Nigeria a better place? Whoever is on the same page with me on making Nigeria better is my friend. I am not interested in whether the person was a bad man in the past or whatever.

“My eye is focused on the goal of making Nigeria a better place by 2019 which means we have a great interest in the way the election will turn out, and we have a great interest in who becomes Nigeria’s president,” he said.

He also commented on the growth of NIM since it was launched few weeks ago.

“The calculations we’ve been working on the past two weeks say we have about two million members. We are national, we are at the six zones, we are at 34 states and about 350 local government areas. That’s the spread of NIM. We are in the Diaspora: Canada, India, New York etc. In fact, we have a very wide spread whenever I look at the statistics I get shocked on how NIM has blossomed across the world.

“NIM is simply a movement. If you followed the Italian election on Sunday, some political parties created the Five Star movement, this movement did not field candidates, but they campaigned on anti-European issues. And as a result of their campaigns, there is no winner in the Italian election.

“The work of NIM is to energise 2019. Though we have two million people today by the next four or five months we may have five million members. These five million people can do a lot of electoral work.

“There are two levels of work. NIM as a movement is mainly about conscientizing, advocacy, talking, pushing the agenda. It had no electoral objective. Then the second objective is that we endorse a person to be president and we turn our energy and support the person. So, we don’t need to have a political party to achieve any of this. All we need to do is to have an alliance.”

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Politics