WHEN politicians cry to the high heavens about some inanities as if their entire lives depended upon them  for survival, discerning onlookers are always amazed.

The other day some opposition parties in Nigeria had agreed to team up and form a formidable party that can confront  what they see as the  political Albatross over their heads  and their continued dwindling political fortunes since 1999 .

They started by coining up a new name APC, which to some symbolises a war machine in the shape  of an Armoured Personnel Carrier, APC. Quite a military hardware  of collective or selective destruction    which soldiers normally use to destroy the homes of opponents  or used normally for coup plotting purposes .

What General Buhari and Tinubu had planned to do was the  political equivalent of a political coup against the PDP-led Federal Government.

Since  Muhammadu Buhari was a military General -cum-former Head of State  and had participated in a coup which overthrew  the civilian government   during the second term regime of President Shagari in December 1983, it fitted the military imagery to coin a name reflecting APC.

The parties in the merger plot are the ACN, ANPP and CPC and a sprinkling of APGA spearheaded by Rochas Okorocha, Governor of Imo State. No sooner  the new name was rushed to the INEC Office in Abuja under Professor Attahiru Jega’s watch , than a new party, African Progressive Party, APC, with same initials  had been borne and also sent to INEC for registration as a new party. That was not all: There is yet another APC in the offing- All Patriotic Citizens. This has gone to show the creativeness of the average Nigerian  in  manufacturing brand names with the lightning  speed of sound.

There has been a great hullabaloo in the media and even the twitter world where most Nigerians are fighting over a brand name.For me, they seem to be missing the points at issue.   Three original parties want to merge without their  willingness  to dissolve their old or  former brand names and choose one of them as their new party, which effortlessly, would have allowed members of the old parties to march into the chosen one en masse.

But the grand old political foxes  would not have any of such frivolities instead; every one of them wants to keep their original names in case of accidents or misadventure. The leadership of the merging parties are clearly strange bedfellows- the progressive front led by the members of the Action Congress of Nigeria led  by Ashiwaju Bola Tinubu, the former Governor of Lagos State; man who reportedly single-handedly bankrolled  the party now in control of four  states in South Western Nigeria and one in South- South, Edo State.

They are clearly the bigger party wanting the merger with Buhari’s Congress for Progressive Change, CPC,   with at least one state in Nassarawa and several senators and members of House of Representatives. CPC is more  conservative with an oligarchic Northern base and his populist Sharia inclinations  to corner the votes in the North in the coming presidential elections in three years  away.

It is clear that Gen. Buhari would likely fly the flag for the merged parties, while  Bola Tinubu would be the running mate; he is not likely to clinch the flag bearer  as OBJ from the South West  had been President of Nigeria before  and another president  from the Yoruba Oduduwa Republic would seem  a tall order.

And where does that leave the ANPP, the oldest of the three parties working towards a marriage of convenience ? Where will the ANPP on whose platform Gen.Buhari had contested the presidency twice in the past 12 years or so  in terms of positions within the new mega party? The ANPP led by Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu ,  a former Abia State Governor who feels optimistic about the eventual registration of the APC believes that at the end of the day they will triumph.

For most politicians, they are uncompromising optimists all the way. Whether they are headed for  hell or heaven, they will shake their heads like the proverbial lizard who after falling off from the walls of new buildings will continue to shake its head literally saying ‘ I dey kampe’.

If carpet crossing is allowed in our clime and most of the party constitutions, why do people make so much noise about registering a new party logo and name? How genuine are the politicians wanting to merge either as APC or  Panadol or even Aspirin- all tablets  for curing perpetual headaches.?

If the merger is meant to overthrow PDP in the next ballot in 2015 presidential election and and even state gubernatorial elections and take control of the Federal Government, they could do one or two things.

First, the unthinkable. Let all members of the other parties join the PDP  and try to overwhelm it with their numerical strength and fight for the positions from within. The party had predicted through Prince Ogbulafor, a former chairman, that it would rule the country for the next 60 years.

If that is done, then all the noise about a fake APC sitting pretty at the INEC offices in Abuja would be of no consequence.

Mr.  WILLY BOZIMO, a veteran journalist, wrote from Asaba, Delta State