All things being equal, all the political parties involved in the moves to merge and produce the All Progressives’ Congress (APC) will hold their respective national conventions to approve the merger on or before May 15, 2013.
To ensure that the date becomes a reality, the merging political parties – the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) – have been advised by the joint committees of the parties to work assiduously towards meeting the May 15 target.
Sunday Independentgathered that, given the task set before the respective parties, the ACN decided to schedule its National Convention for the rectification of the merger to form the APC for April 18, this year.
The ANPP has already constituted a 23-member Convention Committee to stage its convention soon and rectify the merger into the APC.
Deputy National Secretary of the CPC, Okoi Obono-Obla, who is a very active participant in the merger efforts, told Sunday Independent that all the parties in the merger to form the APC were working to ensure that the May 15 target is met.
Obono-Obla said, “We have prepared a time table and have advised all the three parties that they should hold their National Conventions not later than the 15th of May. ACN is holding its convention on April 18; the ANPP is already working seriously to also hold its convention within the time frame. Our own will be by the first week of May at most or last Saturday of April. I don’t think it is going to be anything latter than the last week of this month or the first week of May.”
He said that, after the convention, the emergence of interim leaders of the APC and submission of the necessary merger documents to INEC would commence.
“Then Nigeria’s most formidable opposition party will emerge to change Nigeria,” Obono-Obla stated.
On the possibility of the APC contesting the forthcoming Local Government Election in Cross River State, Obono-Obla said the group was not keen about contesting the election because “the Cross River State Independent Electoral Commission (CROSIEC) is not independent. We will not want to waste our resources on that.”
“If we are able to complete the process, then we should. CROSIEC is not INEC (Independent National Electoral Commission) that says a party should be registered at least 90 days to election. I don’t think that will be applicable to CROSIEC. If we are able to do all these we will contest the election. Otherwise the three parties will contest separately,” he said.
Source: Daily Independent
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