The All Progressives Congress (APC) will hold its National
Convention from next month, the National Publicity Secretary of the
Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said yesterday.
He
told reporters in Abuja that each of the three major parties – ACN,
Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and the All Nigeria Peoples Party
(ANPP) – that make up the APC would cease to exist after the first APC
National Convention in April. The convention will ratify the formation
of the new party
Mohammed said the parties had ratified the draft of the APC's logo,
manifesto and constitution as proposed by its INEC/legal compliance
committees, which were inaugurated a fortnight ago.
He said the logo, slogan and motto were unanimously adopted after
Tuesday's meeting of the larger committee with the governors elected on
the platform of the parties in the merger.
He said there were no objections to the logo, slogan and motto of the APC when they were presented for adoption at the meeting.
Said he: "Only the Merger Committee has the final authority on any
issue about the proposed merger. All the decisions the governors arrived
at in their meeting were presented to the larger committee for approval
and we all deliberated on them and arrived at a consensus on the
grounds that there must be give and take by all the political parties.
On Tuesday, there was no dissent from any group after the meeting of the
governors with the Merger Committee. The proposal of the governors was
endorsed by the chairmen of each of the merger committees of the
political parties.
"This is a process, before you write to INEC of your intentions to
merge; you must accompany the letter with the name of your party, the
logo, slogan, manifesto and constitution of your party. This is why it
is important the sub committees are set up because it is part of the
process of the merger.
"The first thing to do is for each of the merging parties to write to
INEC of its intention to merge, after which the parties will call a
convention to secure the mandate to merge. It is after that mandate is
given at the party's convention, to which INEC will send observers that
the process of winding up will begin so as to join the merger.
"Then, those parties will have to surrender their certificates of
registration and identity to INEC, which means the ACN, CPC, ANPP and
others will cease to exist as registered political parties."
Culled from The Nation