APC Is Now Registers By INEC, Says Akande

• AfricCon Blogspot
  Africcon Blogspot Report:  APC Is Now  Registers By INEC, Says Akande
  
  Covered By Africcon Blogspot
  
  The interim national chairman of the All Progressive Congress (APC), Chief Bisi Akande, yesterday said the party is now a registered one.
  
  Akande, who was accompanied by the interim national secretary of the APC, Alhaji Tijjani Musa Tumsah of the ANPP, made the declaration in Abuja after the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) Political Parties Monitoring and Liaison (PPML) team inspected the APC secretariat in Abuja.
  
  The leader of  the INEC Team and director of PPML, Shittu Ibrahim, alongside other officials,  were conducted round the secretariat at No. 6 Bissau Street, Wuse in Abuja.
  
  The merging parties  -- Action Congress of Nigeria(ACN), Congress for Progressive Change  (CPC), All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and a faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) -- had conducted conventions signalling the merger.
  
  Fielding questions from journalists, Akande said at it stood the APC was already a registered party, adding that INEC has never faulted their registration bid. He stressed that they have completed the merger phase of the exercise.
  
  He said: “From the beginning of this merger negotiations, we have gone to various conventions, we have made joint applications and we have been exchanging correspondence with INEC, but they (INEC) have never visited us before.
  
  “So today (yesterday) INEC came to see us in our home, and they are happy we have got a home. When INEC team met us through our attendance register, they discovered that we belonged to a party of gentlemen, APC.
  
  “INEC has never faulted what we did. When we wrote the first joint application, we had completed the merger phase of the exercise. INEC now needs administrative investigation to show that what we have done was according to their own laid-down procedures, and because of that they kept writing to us and we were replying them.
  
  “Today they came for verifications as to whether we exist, and where do we exist? We have proven to them that we exist like gentlemen and in a befitting accommodation.
  
  “We have always been confident that no power under the sun will stop us from becoming a political party. The party is already registered.”
  
  On his part, Tumsah shrugged off the litigation threats by a political group, the African Peoples Congress (APC), over the acronym.
  
  He said, “The commission came expecting to see some things which we were able to deliver, today. I think everything is in good shape. Our documentation is okay, near perfect;  we are expecting INEC’s notification, telling us that we have been registered.”
  
  On the rival APC groups, Tumsah said, “I am not aware of any other group and we have not gotten any court notice.
  
  “Actually we should be the one taking them to court because we are the main APC and our papers and application are before INEC, awaiting registration notifications.”
  
  When contacted over the matter, Mr Kayode Idowu, the chief press secretary to INEC chairman, told AfricCon Blogspot that “the process is ongoing”.
  
  With the approval of APC, the mega opposition party, by the INEC, all the three parties involved have ceased to exist.
  
  According to the Electoral Act, the merger of parties has been duly approved if the INEC was silent on the letter notifying it of the coming together of two or more parties after two weeks of the notification.
  
  The three parties and factional chieftains of APGA and a few others are coming together primarily to wrest power from the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) with a view to giving the country a better alternative.
  
   According to the Electoral Act, with the approval of the merger, it becomes illegal for anyone to make use of the names of the parties involved for any transaction.
  
  The ruling PDP has been jittery since the merger; it is widely regarded as the greatest threat to the PDP since 1999.