FOR  the older folks, the acronym APC conjures the relics of a past medical history for the treatment of cold and feverish symptoms, especially headache. APC is a mixture of aspirin, phenacetin and caffeine.

This “big tablet” was later banned due its damaging effect on the kidney by the phenacetin component of the drug.

Aspirin was later discovered to have some carcinogeneous properties and, of course, the use of caffeine has been discouraged worldwide due to its effect on the central nervous system. In our younger days neither we nor our parents knew what APC   meant or the inherent dangers it posed for its frequent users. APC has since been overtaken by phensic, panadol, cafenol and paracetamol.

APC also means Armoured Personnel Carrier which the military or police use to move their officers during crisis, protest or political disorder. But this article will be solely interested in the recent use of this acronym by four of Nigeria’s political parties which merged to form the All Progressives Congress, APC. The parties are the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, the All Nigerian Peoples Party, ANPP, the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, and the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC.

The former Borno State Governor and Board of Trustees Chairman for ANPP, Senator Alli Bonu Sheriff described the merger as a done deal and that it has already been sealed. He said “all interests have been adequately balanced in the marriage and fears of perceived hidden individual agenda have been assuaged without any particular group dominating other parties”.

This very simplistic conclusion by Senator Bonu sheriff for a very complex situation is rather unfortunate and pathetic. The former governor has opted for the ostrich option as he has buried his head in the sand, oblivious of his surroundings. It is an unthinkable political naivety to surmise that an association formed by four DIFFERENT political parties would result in a perfect union without the bigger ACN and CPC dominating the ANPP and already divided APGA.

Even today within the four merged parties, there is none without internal problems and factions. The APGA, especially, is like the scene of a horror movie where every leader is gunning for each other’s jugular. The CPC is even worse as it has two factions. One led by  Senator Rufai Hanga and the other by General Mohammadu Buhari. Even though Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu has done so much to reconcile both camps, so much remains to be done to put the CPC under one roof. The ANPP has bred more political prostitutes than any other party in Nigeria and is therefore a spy house for most other political parties. The ANPP is like a transit camp for Nigeria’s political parties. It is a divided house that does not have a concrete political force that can propel it to the tenets of true democracy.

The only party in the merger without a splinter wing is the ACN. This does not mean that the party does not have its internal problems as all parties do. The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, even though outside the merger, has more woes than all the four parties combined but they are managing their crises.

This shows that all political parties have their own peculiar problems but for such parties to go into alliances with other political parties without putting their houses in order is tantamount to political harakiri and hypocrisy. Even in most advanced countries of the world, no political party is problem-free.

If the aim of APC is to wrest political power from the PDP, then the merger is already dead on arrival, DOA. But if the merger is to give the PDP a good fight for the nation’s electoral votes, then the venture is worth all the efforts.

I will use figures released by INEC on 02/02/2013 for the KanoState assembly bye-election result to illustrate the above point.

In Gaya Area, PDP recorded 42,696 votes, ANPP 2,379, DPP 150, CPP 155, CPC 979, CAP 55, ADC 77, AD  82, and AA 44. From the figures above, the votes of all the other eight political parties are far less than   10 percent of the votes garnered by PDP.

In Garko area, PDP recorded 53,895 votes, while all the other seven parties recorded only 3934 votes. This means that all the other seven political parties recorded just about eight percent of PDP’s total votes, as CPP did not contest election in Garko area .

The implications of this result are very far-reaching. Kano is one of the core states for CPC where  Buhari, the CPC leader, is very influential. It is also an ANPP dormain and yet the PDP won so convincingly.

The prophecy of Chief Vincent Ogbulafor, PDP’s former chairman that the PDP would rule Nigeria for the next 60 years without break is almost coming to pass. I can see this frustrating and vexacious prophecy coming to pass even as 14 years of this arrogant and disdainful prophecy have gone by.

And so who are these all progressives? Can they reverse this ominous trend. Do they have the political paraphernalia and capacity to change this uni-party structure that the PDP is enjoying.

Whether the other parties agree or not the most powerful partner is the ACN. They have more members in the House of Representatives, they have more members in the Senate, they have more governors. They also have more political structures on  ground and more money. Just like the PDP most of our political parties rely on enormous funds from the party state governors. And of course the ACN leader, a former state governor for two terms, is the richest of the pack.

But with all the above, is the ACN a progressive party? What makes a party progressive. Is it the politician, the party structure or the electorate who owns the power which is deviously diverted by the politicians to satisfy their selfish ends?

Can we really say the ACN is a progressive party or can we even say its leaders are progressives? A Tinubu supporter described him as a progressive because according to him, Tinubu was a National Democratic Coalition, NADECO, chieftain, a two-time governor and a former senator.

In my view, none of the above qualifies the former Lagos State Governor as a progressive? I am aware that the former governor is very kind hearted, humane and philanthropic, daily doling out cash in millions to his unending queue of poverty-striken followers.

The embattled Egyptian President, Mohammed Morsy once said: “There is no Islamic democracy, there is only democracy”. In the same vein, there is nothing like Nigerian democracy, there is nothing like home-grown democracy, there is only democracy. And the layman’s definition of democracy is government of the people by the people and for the people.

The ACN is at best a relic of an African traditional cultural association which accords the elderly unquestionable loyalty and followership.

Mr.  BEN NANAGHAN, a commentator on national issues, wrote from Lagos.