APC’s new mega-headache

It is a great misnomer to call the joining of the All Progressives Congress, APC, by the G.7 and other rebel PDP members two days ago a “merger”. It was more of a defection. The difference between these two political expressions is clear. A defection means the transfer of membership, belonging or loyalty from one platform to another.
A defector drops his old individuality and assumes the identity of his new group. A merger, on the other hand, can be illustrated with the political action that led to the birth of the APC. Three separate registered political parties – the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC and the All Nigerian Peoples Party, ANPP, shed all their old identities and assumed a completely new one.
Some of the faces at the merger includes Ogbonaya Onu, nPDP chairman, Kawu Baraje, Senator Bukola Saraki, Governor Rotimi Amaechi, former Lagos Governor, Bola Tinubu, chair of the APC, Chief Bisi Akande, The three parties formally held their respective valedictory national congresses and announced the end of their old parties in favour of the new one. The leadership of the main parties sat down, negotiated, shared power and offices and evolved a new flag, symbols, constitution.
But the PDP defectors simply emptied into the APC, unconditionally, it would seem. By so doing, the size of the APC has ballooned (at least, on paper) from 11 to 16 governors compared to PDP’s 18 (assuming that Governors Sule Lamido and Babangida Aliyu are now rated “non-aligned”); 48 senators as compared to 58 of PDP and (as some newspapers put it) and 199 members of the House of Reps compared to 147 of PDP). Read more