13 Political Parties Plan Merger

A total of 13 registered political parties in the country have agreed to collapse into one mega party to be known as Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the interim national chairman of the proposed party, Dr. Onwunbuya Breakforth, has said.

Briefing newsmen yesterday, in Abuja, Breakforth said the merger was coming as a result of the ‘failure’ of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) to rescue Nigerians from the various challenges bedeviling the nation.

He, however, declined to mention the names of the parties, saying their names would be made public when INEC announced the registration of the new party.  

“This movement has been consulting with different political parties and 13 of them have agreed to come together and merge as one mega party. It’s a merger not alliance. We are going to merge like the ACN, CPC, ANPP, New PDP and part of APGA merged to become APC and seized power in 2015.

“We have approached INEC for registration of the 13 parties as Freedom and Justice Party and the commission has already approved the name and our logo. We have met all the requirements and INEC has 30 days by law to do this.

“The arrangement is that each of the 13 political parties will organize a national convention and the decision to collapse into the mega party would be taken at the convention which remains the highest decision-making body of all political parties in Nigeria.

“Our decision to merge is premised on the fact that there is no need having too many political parties that cannot win elections. So we are forming a merger that is bigger than that of the APC.

“Our plan is that after 2019, there will be no more PDP or APC because the APC is a party with a head but without body, while the PDP has body without a head,” he said.

He claimed that Nigeria’s exit from recession as announced by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) recently was a “paper work aimed at deceiving Nigerians”, saying that it has no effect on the poor man on the street.