2011: ACN, CPC DEAL ON HOLD OVER FUSION

Details from why the much touted alliance between the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) could not be consummated have emerged even as disagreement arose over which party should fuse into the other.

The All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) which had refrained from the talks obviously because of the fundamental differences between the leadership and the General Buhari-led leadership of the CPC, is waiting in the wings for a possible working arrangement with ACN in the event of the collapse of the CPC/ACN merger talks

Sources revealed yesterday that the ACN and CPC alliance had agreed to the adoption of General Buhari, the presidential candidate of the CPC as the consensus alliance candidate, while the ACN is expected to produce the running mate.

However, since the two parties could not merge as doing so would run contrary to electoral law which mandates the intending parties in such arrangement to notify the INEC of their intension 60 days to the eventual merger, the only option open to them is for one of the parties to fuse into the other and notify the INEC which will then deregister the fusing party by withdrawing its certificate.

While the ACN is of the opinion that its name should be adopted while CPC fuses into it, the CPC believes otherwise. A chieftain of CPC confided in Daily Sun that the reason why ACN is maintaining that stand despite having the Vice-President slot is because it considers itself a bigger partner in the arrangement because it controls three states while CPC does not control any.

'As a matter of fact the reason why CAN ceded the presidency to CPC was just because of the stature of General Buhari. In anycase, the General would not have stepped down even if ACN requested for that.'

It was learnt yesterday that how early the two parties were able to resolve this would determine when they would sign the merger agreement.

Efforts to speak to the National Publicity Secretary of the CPC, Engineer Rotimi Fashakin proved abortive as he could not be reached for comment on the development.

Meanwhile, the ANPP leaders were also drawing up their own agreement which they would present to the ACN delegation yesterday night.

The party, it was learnt, was of the view that the merger arrangement between ACN and CPC notwithstanding, it would still find a space for joint prosecution of the election in April.

Sources told Daily Sun that ANPP was looking forward to a working arrangement which might entail it producing the National Chairman of any party that may be produced from the alliance.

National Publicity Secretary of the ANPP, Emmanuel Eneukwu, confirmed that Daily Sun that his party was still much in discussion with CAN. He said his party was not aware of CAN discussion with CPC and CPC was never part of its discussion with the leadership of ACN.