AS APC INTERIM EXCO EMERGES MAY 13 :AKANDE, MOMOH, ONU JOSTLE FOR SLOTS

With General Muhammadu Buhari giving an inkling that he may be taking another shot at the Presidency of the country come 2015, there are fears that constituting an executive committee (exco) members to run the affairs of the All Progressives Congress (APC) may not be a tea party.

The anxiety is borne out of the fact that the political parties in the merger talks are yet to come to terms with the idea of sacrificing their personal ambitions for general good.

That, of course, was the greatest undoing of the opposition parties, particularly the Action congress of Nigeria (ACN) and the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) in the build-up to the 2011 election and eventual collapse of alliance talks.

They are at it again, going by Sunday Independent investigations that have revealed that the chairmen of the three merging parties – ACN, CPC and All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) – have started scheming to control the soul of the APC whose interim leadership is believed to be coming alive on Monday, May 13, 2013.

“Whoever thinks he has got a chance, let him come out because the more the merrier it becomes… I will be ready to step down, if there is a better candidate. It is not about me, but the survival of the party,” Buhari said in Minna last week.

But barring last minute manoeuvres, the interim exco of the newly-formed APC will come on board on May 13.

However, the intrigues over those who will pilot the activities of the new party are already on, Sunday Independent investigations have revealed.

The APC is a newly-formed political party by some opposition politicians drawn from ACN, CPC, ANPP and some members of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) loyal to Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State.

Apart from the Okorocha-led group of APGA, the other parties involved in the merger parade tested politicians with the capacity to run the affairs of the APC either on interim or permanent basis.

They include former governor of Osun State, Bisi Akande (ACN); former governor of Abia State, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu (ANPP) and former Minister of Information, Tony Momoh (CPC).

We got it on good authority during the week that they are all interested in piloting the affairs of the APC from the scratch as the interim leadership makes its debut and are deploying all the scheming wits within their capacity to come on board.

They were all said to be patiently waiting for the final consummation of the APC merger with the planned Convention of the ANPP and CPC, which, Sunday Independent gathered during the week, comes up on Saturday, May 11.

While the ANPP Convention holds in Zamfara State, that of the CPC takes place in Abuja, according to authoritative party sources.

ANPP spokesman, Emma Eneukwu, confirmed that the party’s Convention holds on May 11, barely a month its National Executive (NEC) met over the merger arrangement.

While the ACN had its Convention on April 18 in Lagos, the CPC spokesman, Rotimi Fasakin, told this newspaper that they are also planning for their National Convention on May 11.

A ranking member of the ACN confided in Sunday Independent that “many of the old horses are keen to emerge as leaders of the APC interim executive committee.”

He noted, though, that because the APC has so much work to do in terms of registration of members across the country, it may not be out of place to draft the former chairmen of the merging parties into the interim leadership.

According to him, the APC may not do away with the chairmen of the merging parties as the interim exco members emerge, as “the older the better”.

The party chieftain said APC needs tested men and women who understand the antics of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), now that the APC intends to interface with Nigerians across every nooks and crann, stressing that the promoters of the party cannot afford not to draw from their wealth of experience.

But he said one thing that is obvious is that “everybody will have to register afresh as members of the APC”.

For him, “the issue is how to take the PDP out of government in the interest of Nigerians.”

According to our findings, the Okorocha-led group of APGA in the merger arrangement may have been “technically schemed out” of the merger project going by hints from an insider who is in a position to know.

According to our source, the ACN, ANPP and CPC do not want to be boxed to a corner by the crisis rocking the APGA leadership which may pose some problems to the APC, if the promoters should continue to wait for the party to resolve its crisis and hold its Convention.

Regardless, one of the strong voices on the merger project and chairman of C21 Group, Senator Annie Okonkwo, told Sunday Independent that the Okorocha-led Group of APGA has also chosen May 13 for its own “Convention” in Owerri, the Imo State capital. But an aide to the governor said what will happen on the day in question is acclamation and not convention.

Regardless, Okonkwo said their group was committed to the merger and working hard to ensure that the “No Convention tag on APGA” does not impede their efforts.

On the thinking of the merging parties over the emergence of interim leadership for APC, Fasakin said he “was not prepared to be drawn into speculation”, just as Eneukwu told this newspaper that the “ANPP is waiting on the will of God to prevail.”

On his part, Okonkwo maintained that the Igbo are key to the merger arrangement and that both the South West and the North should have known by now that “giving the right to run for the office of the Presidency to the South East was the only magic the APC needs to drive PDP out of Aso Rock in 2015.”

Recently, Sunday Independent reported exclusively that the intrigues leading to the emergence of the anticipated NEC members of the party had started already.

With the setting up of the Zonal Contact and Mobilisation committees formed from the Progressive Governors’ Alliance, we learnt that the party had started in earnest to shop for those who will pursue the dream of the APC to its logical conclusion.

Some names of tested politicians, we reported, were thrown up, particularly from the South East zone, an area believed to have been earmarked for the chairmanship and speakership slots, and a move which Sunday Independent gathered indicates that both the Presidential and Vice Presidential slots had been parceled out in principle to the North and the South West zones.

But fresh findings indicate that more alignments and realignments have long entered into the political mix for positions in APC and would be unveiled after the merger is fully consummated.

From the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), all the merging parties must compulsorily hold their conventions to drop their former identities such as logo, flag, manifesto, motto, and other characteristics that are peculiar to them, after which they will all come together at another convention where they would ratify their decision by proclaiming membership of a new party with new features.

A top officer in INEC told Sunday Independent during the week that the Commission expected to collect the former certificates of the merging parties as individual parties before issuing a new one under the new merger party – APC.

“When the processes are completed, which, of course, includes conventions, INEC would retrieve the certificates from the former political parties before issuing a fresh one under the fresh arrangement as APC,” the INEC officer explained. His disclosure corresponded with what a chieftain of the APC told this newspaper that they “would write INEC for recognition as one party under the name of APC after submitting their former certificates as individual political parties.”

Source: Daily Independent