ALL is not well with the newly formed All Progressives Congress (APC), as three of the merging parties have kicked against the imposition role played by the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) chieftain, Chief Tom Ikimi in the choice of the new party’s logo.
The All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) has therefore directed its members in the merger committee to meet early next week to review the development with the hindsight of assuring it that the party’s interests are well respected.
This is also as two foremost leaders of the new party, General Mohammadu Buhari and Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu may meet in Kano in the next few days to address the grey areas in the merger arrangement, particularly the need to end the intra party crisis in the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) before the special party convention scheduled to hold next month.
Tinubu has been mediating between the Hanga Rufai- led and Tony Momohled factions of the CPC and has almost achieved a truce before last week Appeal Court judgment that gifted victory to the Momoh faction resulting in the expulsion of Senator Hanga and some of his allies from the party. This action has once more stoked the crisis in the CPC and has tended to derail the peace process already initiated by Tinubu.
Meanwhile, at the last meeting of the enlarged merger committee, which include all the opposition governors, two ANPP governors of Borno and Yobe were absent and no reason was given for their absence. Saturday Mirror also gathered that the National Chairman of the ANPP, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu including some members of his National Working Committee have tactically distanced themselves from most of the meetings where the merger issues are discussed.
Chief Ikimi, an Edo State-born ACN chieftain is the chairman of the merger committee and he has the singular honour of donating his Maitama, Abuja residence for most of the meetings of the committee in which he also presides. An ANPP source who was also at the Tuesday meeting where the logo was unveiled said that Ikimi favoured the ACN in the deliberations that resulted in the choice of the ‘broom’ in the logo.
The committee also favoured the choice the CPC slogan of ‘change’ while the ANPP was left to contend with just a mere colour of its flag. According to the source, “in spite of the fact that the ANPP commands more grassroots presence and controls larger number of states in the North, yet the party was treated with ignominy. The outcome of the meeting was orchestrated and the script was written before hand only to be read that night.
“My party has however resolved to be part of the merger but we will not stand and watch other party subsume us into their planned agenda. We are aware that one of the parties resisted our joining the merger but should we be treated unequally in the merger, we may chose to opt out.
The agenda behind the merger is to end the misrule of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), but we are yet to achieve that and inequality has already begun creeping in. It is quite unfortunate.”
However, the National Publicity Secretary of the ACN, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, who is also a member of the merger committee, told Saturday Mirror that the new party’s logo, slogan and motto was unanimously adopted after the meeting of the larger committee and the opposition alliance governors which ended late on Tuesday.
On the imposition of the party’s logo, slogan and motto on the merger committee by the governors, Mohammed noted that the committee has been working in harmony with the alliance governors, noting that no member of the committee objected to the logo, slogan or motto of the new party when it was presented for adoption at the meeting.
He said: “Only the merger committee has the final authority on any issue about the proposed merger, the governors explained that all the decisions the governors arrived at in their own meeting was presented to the larger committee for approval and we all deliberated on them and arrived at a consensus on the ground that there must be give and take by all the intending merger political parties.
Saturday Mirror also learnt that some members of the CPC were not in support of the slogan, ‘Justice, Unity and Peace’ and had lobbied for it to be changed.