The Interim National Chairman of All Progressives Congress, APC, Chief Bisi Akande, yesterday, said that the door of the party was open for any disenchanted member of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, including President Goodluck Jonathan, if the crisis in the party became unbearable for them.
Chief Akande stated this while briefing newsmen after the first executive meeting of APC, following its registration by Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, last week.
He said: “We don’t close our door to PDP and if Jonathan is tired of the crisis in PDP, he is welcomed in the APC.
“From now on it will not be difficult for Nigerians to know which party has been inflicting pains on them for the last 14 years and which party is poised to relieve them of these pains.
“The ideology APC represents is the ideology of existing for the sake of the people and not for selfish aggrandisement of a few leaders.
“So we are going to make that clear very shortly and even by the attitude of our 11 governors in their various states. By what they are doing you would have seen that there is a division between APC and PDP.”
On what would become the fate of All Progressives Congress if the court rules in favour of one of the political associations, African Peoples Congress, which was in contention of the acronym APC, he said: “In Nigeria today we don’t know any other APC apart from this All Progressives Congress and we don’t contemplate anything.
“Nothing will happen to move this APC out of place. We remain a party and we shall remain a party for ever to rule this country Nigeria.”
Meanwhile, APC has also asked African People’s Congress to seek a new name and apply for registration if it was keen on being a political party.
Chairman of APC Merger Committee, Chief Tom Ikimi, who spoke to Vanguard in Abuja, said that the group was being propelled by forces within Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to thwart the registration of APC for selfish reasons.
Ikimi, a former Foreign Affairs Minister, said that with the formal registration of APC by INEC, the issue of who was real or fake had been laid to rest and that it was left for the group to seek a new name.
He said: “With the registration of APC, it is very clear who is fake and who is not.
“The fake APC should seek a new name and go for registration if indeed it wants to be registered as a party in the country.”