20100814
xinhuanet

LAGOS -- Nigeria's main opposition party, Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) has said it was government in waiting in response to President Goodluck Jonathan's comment on opposition parties.

The party made the assertion in a statement sent to Xinhua by its spokesman Lai Mohammed.

Mohammed described the purported comments credited to President Jonathan that the opposition had conceded the presidency to the PDP ahead of the 2011 general elections as the height of wishful thinking.

"While the ACN may have been in position till a few months ago, we have since moved on to become a government in waiting, ready to take Nigeria on a journey to glory and prosperity with the full consent of the people in 2011," the statement said.

The statement said President Jonathan might have mistaken the parties that joined the PDP in its so-called Government of National Unity for the real opposition, hence the overtly-exultant statement.

He said the party also dispelled the notion that the opposition was 'spearheading' PDP's zoning debate.

He said ACN's intervention on the issue was to warn against allowing the zoning issue to distract from governance, especially since governance had been seriously affected by the needless debate.