Former Minister Of Education, Oby Ezekwesili shocked Nigerians some weeks back after she declared that she is dropping her ambition of running for Presidency as a result of disagreement with her Party.
According to her, she fell for the ‘tricks’ of the ACPN leadership when they approached her to run for presidency on their platform.
She said;
“We held several meetings before I chose to run on the ACPN platform, and in each of those meetings, I was clear to all that if the target was the same transactional money-grabbing politics that has held us back, I would never go along with it. My public stance that the nomination form for Presidency should not be above N100,000 was acceded to by the Party while they pressed me to join their fold.
“At one point, we were supposed to have a meeting with all the state coordinators of the party. Instead of the ACPN leadership to be honest about the strengths of the party and explain that some states did not have coordinators at the time, they hired fake coordinators, and asked the campaign to fly them into Abuja. .
You all saw how they demonstrated their preferred brand of politics last week by endorsing the ruling APC in a classic summersault. Deceptive politics of transactions at its worst! “Their actions last week did not surprise me one bit. .
My relationship with the ACPN became problematic once they faced the reality of my modest financial means that I had transparently disclosed to them from the beginning. Their mistake was that they harbored two wrong assumptions about me.
“Immediately I expressed my options in those clear terms, the choice was easy. I cannot do anything that contradicts my eternal values. For someone who was running for office with a promise to fix our politics, getting mired in the mud of transactional anti-people politics would have represented a quick fall. God forbid! I had to live my values; I had to follow my truth. And I am proud I did.