The newly-formed All Progressives Congress Party, APC, has decided to adopt a neutral logo as a solution to the brewing crisis within the party.
The Action Congress of Nigeria, All Nigeria Peoples Party, Congress for Progressive Congress and a faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance are merging to form the yet-to-be registered political party by the Independent National Electoral Commission.
However, the exclusion of the cock, which is the logo of APGA, led some of its members to protest. It even made some of the party representatives to walk out of a recent meeting of the merger parties, although they returned after much persuasion.
This has led the leadership to consider going for a neutral logo that will not include a symbol of any of its member parties.
This was confirmed by a reliable source within the party on Saturday, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying:
“What we have resolved to do is to have a logo that is neutral, one that will prove to all that as a political party, we are prepared to offer Nigerians a fresh start.
“We considered the implications of having the symbols of the three leading parties in the merger but soon realised that others who are coming to join us may feel left out.”
The source also explained that the APC had equally learnt a lesson from the crisis rocking the All Progressives Grand Alliance.
“Imagine what would have happened if we had unveiled a logo which has a symbol of APGA only for factions of the party to dissociate themselves from it,” he said.
The National Publicity Secretary of the CPC, Rotimi Fashakin, told on Saturday that APC was still working on its logo.
“We have decided to hold any announcement on the logo in abeyance to allow for wider consultation. As far as I know, we are working to carry everybody along. Politics is all about consultations and consensus building.”
Meanwhile, the National Publicity Secretary of Action Congress of Nigeria, Mr. Lai Mohammed, has said since the opposition parties came together, there had been several attempts aimed at causing disaffection in their ranks.
He said that while it was true that the party was yet to adopt a new logo, it was being capitalized upon by some persons to cause disaffections among the members.
“There are people bent on causing trouble and disaffection in the new party. They will not succeed.
“These set of people are bent on working against the merger. They don’t know that we are resolute in the merger,” he said.
When asked if the saboteurs were within the merging parties of from another political party, he said it could be both from within and outside the party.
“They can be from other parties that are afraid of our coming together, because they never thought it would be possible for us.
“They can also be within us, those working for the enemy. But one thing that has been working for us is that we didn’t set any condition for ourselves when we started the merger.
“We are very truthful to ourselves and this has been helping us.”
Mohammed also said that the three working committees set up on Wednesday would meet the two-week deadline given them.
The three committees are to produce the constitution, manifesto, which will include the motto, slogan and message while the last committee- legal and constitutional compliance, will handle documentation on how to meet the legal requirements for its registration by INEC.
“They know they have to work harder in order to be able to meet INEC’s deadline because we have to submit these documents with our application for registration to INEC,” Mohammed added.