ACN set to hold convention

Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, has set April 18 for its national convention where it hopes to adopt a resolution collapsing the party into All Progressive Congress, APC. The proposal from the party is coming as the party, yesterday, said it was not particularly concerned with the registration or non-registration of any political association. ACN's stance nonetheless, Conference of Nigerian Political Parties, CNPP, has welcomed the rejection of the application for registration of African Peoples Congress by Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC. While confirming the April 18 date for its national convention, ACN's national publicity secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, told Vanguard, yesterday, that ACN was mindful of the reason given by INEC for the rejection of the application by African Peoples Congress. He said INEC should have rejected the application on the basis of the constructive knowledge the commission had about the merger even before the consideration of the irregularities in the application. He said: "We are not interested in any association getting registered or not being registered, it is not our business. Our point is that INEC ought ab initio not to have accepted that acronym from them. That is our position. "The fact that they have disqualified them on another ground, we are not impressed because what it means is that if they had filled their names correctly then they would have been registered." and that would have meant that anytime anyone wants to do a merger it would be so fraught with danger because anybody could have come in the middle of the process to scuttle it." CNPP, however, welcomed INEC's decision, saying it was a blow on the alleged effort by PDP to turn the country into a one-party state. Speaking through its national publicity secretary, Osita Okechukwu, CNPP said: "We salute INEC for serving the cause of justice and defending the constitution. We have always known that African Peoples Congress was born out of mischief to sustain a one-party state foisted at variance with the constitution by PDP." Vanguard