Former Executive Governor of Osun State and first interim Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Bisi Akande, has given an insight into how the party was formed.
The septuagenarian disclosed this in an interview with Sunday Sun in his hometown in Osun State.
Asked if the formation of the mega alliance that brought about the APC which eventually defeated the Peoples Democratic Party, a party that described itself as biggest in Africa, was an easy one, Akande said:
“Oh, no. It cannot be easy anywhere because most of the people who were trying to be stakeholders might be selfish. And selfish motives can always stand in the way of good ideas. At the beginning, it was going to be Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC). The reason was, in 2011, ACN and CPC talked of a union or an alliance up to the eve of the election. As soon as the election was over, and both lost, CPC felt we should continue with discussion where we left it. And it was going to be a union of the CPC and the ACN. But good judgment told us that if we did that, the octopus PDP with a lot of money that could not be easy for anybody to count and the source of which we did not know, could be used to expand the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) to become a third force. And we did not want a third force. So, we insisted on having the ANPP with us. So, it was conditioned that, with CPC, we must continue with discussion where we ended but if we must succeed in the end, we must have ANPP with us. We insisted on having the ANPP with us.
And immediately after the merger, there was a faction in the PDP called New PDP. We did not want that one too to become a third force. We quickly worked very hard to see that we got them to us. So, it was a political arithmetic the kind that not many people would assume. But as we were on the drawing board, we were seeing it and we were trying to mop up all other factors that might create a third force to see that they worked with us.”