APC: PDP is suffering from crass ignorance – ACN

The Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) has accused the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of either suffering from crass ignorance or engaging in palpable mischief by saying that leaders of the All Progressives’ Congress (APC) should have registered the name with INEC before now.

In a statement issued in Lagos on Wednesday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said it is disturbing that the ruling party in Africa’s largest democracy can exhibit such ignorance or mischief, when the legal requirements for a merger are well spelt out in the Electoral Act.

”For the avoidance of doubt, the law does not make any provision for any group to reserve a name at INEC, and the legal requirements for a merger do not allow registration until all the stipulated conditions have been met. Applying for registration before the conditions have been met will be like putting the cart before the horse, and would have been illegal and irregular

”The only other way that the promoters of the APC could have registered the name before now is to short-circuit the system, like the PDP would have done. The ruling party’s modus operandi is lawlessness, underhand dealings and opaque transactions. That is why the fortunes of Nigeria have deteriorated rapidly under their watch.

”But as law-abiding citizens, APC leaders are following the stipulated conditions to the letter, and will not allow themselves to be stampeded into committing an illegality. Not even the PDP’s shameless act of sponsoring a phony party to instigate an acronym war and give an increasingly partisan INEC a reason not to register the All Progressives’ Congress will stampede the APC promoters,” it said.