Statement Issued On Sunday, June 28, 2015, By The Former Interim Chairman Of The All Progressive Congress (APC), Bisi Akande
Some times in 2013, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN),
All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and Congress for Progressive Change (CPC)
resolved to merge and set up a merger committee to work out the modality for
gluing together as one political party under one name, one constitution and one
manifesto. A splinter of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) sought to
be included in the merger. An application made to the Independent National
Electoral Commission (INEC) to this end by All Progressives Congress (APC)
National Interim Committee, composed of ACN, ANPP, CPC, and factions of APGA
and Democratic People’s Party (DPP) was approved in July, 2013.
Between Bola Ahmed Tinubu (an ACN leader) and Kashim Imam (a
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leader), the idea came up and was adopted that
the new party should embark on a membership recruitment drive to certain PDP
governors, whose main agenda was to see President Goodluck Jonathan out of
power. The recruitment efforts took APC leaders to Rivers, Kwara ,
Niger , Sokoto, Kano Kano
The APC thereafter organised membership registrations in all the
over 120,000 polling units and followed up by using these registered members to
conduct congresses in all the almost 8000 wards, in over 770 local governments,
in all the 36 states (including Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and
a convention at the National level, thereby creating one united APC party
structure all over Nigeria. With this air of oneness, APC went ahead to conduct
primaries to select candidates for state governors and Houses of Assembly and
for the presidency and the National Assemblies.
