The newly-formed mega opposition party, the All Progressives’ Congress, APC, has alleged that its ranks have been infiltrated by apologists of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party.
This was made known by the National Publicity Secretary of the Action Congress of Nigeria, one of the partners in the merger, Lai Mohammed on Monday. He however said that proposed merger would still go ahead, because many of its leading lights belonged to the association.
Mohammed said, “Where have they (PDP) not infiltrated in Nigeria? We have been in this business for long. We know where it is coming from, we know who is financing them.
“When the fake APC fell by the way, they have to try another thing. Here everyone that matters from Yerima, Sheriff, Shekarau and everyone that matters are here at the meeting.”
He added that many areas of the merger have been fine tuned,
“We are completely on track, we are not going to be stampeded into making a mistake because of some clowns, who are afraid of losing election. We will never change our name.
“You have a meeting with about 90 people. Can you keep a secret among 90 people? Even the process of arriving at a name, is it not by robust debate?” he asked.
Mohammed explained that the enlarged caucus meeting of the merging political parties in Abuja, was designed to fine-tune details of the APC manifesto and its constitution among other issues. He also said that the enlarged caucus meeting was not considering a change of name, as it was following the laid down rules and regulations guiding the merger of political activities.
He said, “We are here to meet, whatever is decided here, we have to take it back to our individual parties where they will make observations and suggestions which they will give us to bring back, this will be harmonised and a final dicision will be taken.”
He said the association had no problem with the Independent National Electoral Commission because the process for registration was different from that of the merger of existing political parties.
He said, “When somebody wants to ambush you he will try his best to ambush you, it is left for you to work on the straight path. There is no time INEC told us that we are doing anything wrong in our bid to merge.
“The ACN has written INEC on the convention coming up in Lagos on the 18th of this month and they (INEC) knows we are going to discuss the issue of merger among other things.”