THE Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) has said that with the huge success of its national convention in Lagos last Thursday, the party has crossed the last hurdle in its quest to merge with other leading opposition parties in the country.
In a statement issued in Lagos Sunday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said it achieved its targets at the convention, which were to pass a resolution approving the merger with the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), and the conclusion of a pending disciplinary issue with the expulsion from the party of its erring one-time chairman in Kaduna State, Mohammed Musa Soba.
The statement read in part: "Thanks to that convention, our party, the ACN, has irrevocably committed to consummating the merger with other key opposition parties to provide an alternative platform for Nigerians, who are tired of perpetual misrule.
"The conventions of the CPC and the ANPP slated for next month will clear the last hurdle along the merger path and signal the dawn of a new day for long-suffering Nigerians, who are eagerly awaiting the merger. It will also sound the death knell for the evil forces that have held our country by the jugular in the past 13 years of its return to democratic rule."
Meanwhile, the ACN has lamented the level of corruption in the country, blaming it on the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). It said: "What Nigerians have always believed has been confirmed from other lands.
"According to media reports today (Sunday), a new report submitted to the U.S. Congress by Secretary of State, John Kerry, has confirmed mass corruption at all levels of the Nigerian Government.
"Coming at a time the PDP and Federal Government have been engaging in chest-beating over the fight against corruption, this is a body blow. They hinge their claim of fighting corruption on the establishment of the EFCC and the ICPC.
"What they have not told Nigerians is that these two bodies have been stifled by the same PDP and the Federal Government to such extent that no other party or government in the history of our nation has been more immersed in corruption.
"The unprecedented and monumental fuel subsidy fraud happened under the PDP and its central government. The mind-boggling pension fraud, the $6 million Wilbros Scandal - all happened under this government. We are therefore not surprised at the scathing portrayal of Nigeria by the U.S. report, which we will revisit in the days ahead."
