By Emmanuel Aziken, Political Editor

The fledging opposition party reaches a landmark in its continuing efforts towards confronting the ruling party with the adoption of its insignia of battle. The ruling party is, however, not folding its arms.

It was a sober time for the president and his guests at the national caucus of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP on Wednesday night.

Despite recently overcoming the irritating howls of the party’s vociferous governors, the president and top party officials were allegedly still uncomfortable with the continuing stride of the major opposition political parties towards a merger.

The PDP top hierarchy was really troubled that the opposition parties had the day before, successfully come out with a logo for the new opposition party to be known as the All Progressive Congress, APC.

President Goodluck Jonathan was alleged to have as such frontally charged the party executives to recharge themselves for what he said, promises to be the major confrontation between the ruling party and the merged party.

Until now, the ruling parties have almost not bothered with the consequence of alliance or talks of merger by opposition political parties.

Where they did not sabotage the opposition parties, the leaders of the opposition parties through selfish grandstanding had in almost every case damaged the alliance or merger plans.

But not now as the major opposition political parties earlier this week produced a logo to indicate an identity for the proposed merged party to be known as the All Progressive Congress, APC.

Besides a logo, the parties also came out with a slogan to herald the beats of war on the campaign grounds. Never before in the political history of the country have opposition parties reached the point arrived at this week.

The four parties are now expected to formally bury their separate identities and crystallise into the APC in separate national conventions where the merger plans are expected to be formally ratified.

However, arriving at the new identity was not an easy task for the chieftains of the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, All Nigeria Peoples Party, ANPP and the All Peoples Grand Alliance, APGA that are involved in the merger talks.

First, getting a new name was not easy as one or two of the legacy parties initially insisted on retaining their names while all other parties joined any of the parties so chosen. However, reason soon prevailed as the parties resolved and the parties last month came up with a name that was agreeable to all.

The adoption of All Progressive Congress, remarkably had a word reflecting each of the legacy parties -All for the ANPP, Progressive for the CPC and APGA and Congress, for the ACN. But soon after the name was adopted internal fissures within APGA meant that retaining it in the merger agreement could torpedo the whole arrangement.

So, while the parties have continued to carry their APGA colleagues along, it is, however, unlikely that the party would be formally submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC as one of the merger parties.

While efforts were made to accommodate the interests of all the parties in the choice of a logo, slogan and motto, sources in the evolving party disclosed that the broader outlook was also a significant matter for consideration.

Dominant colour of the parties
So in the choice of the logo, the dominant colour of each of the parties was reflected.

The green and white was chosen to represent the ANPP and ACN, the blue to reflect the CPC, and the red bottom was chosen to reflect APGA which has a red cock in its emblem.

The broom which was what was popularly associated with the ACN was not just adopted to reflect that party’s identity, but as was learnt, was adopted to reflect the commonality of the broom as an instrument for sweeping in Nigerian homes.

“There is no home you can go to that you will not find the broom and that is why it is there, to reflect the commonality of everyone of us,” a member of the merger committee of one of the parties told Vanguard.

“Some one referred to an Igbo proverb that if you take one stick of broom that you can break it but if you take it as a bundle, you cannot.” That, it was learnt, also informed the adoption of the motto as “Justice, Peace and Unity.”

For its slogan the joint merger committee chose “Change”. Just like the adoption of the broom, the adoption of Change as the slogan for the new party was according to a source based on the reality on the ground, to the effect that Nigerians are wholly inclined to change.

Change, or Changii remarkably, is the slogan of the CPC. No one it seemed was averse to change in the ranks of the opposition and so it was easily adopted.