SIR: The Nigerian political class’s penchant for heating up the political system is unbecoming. Apart from their notoriety for corruption in addition to their steepness in undemocratic tendencies as rigging, imposition of candidates for elections and rejection of electoral results except those in their favour, among sundry subversion of the electoral process, they are always found locked in one bitter wrangling or the other among themselves. This anomaly keeps the political environment constantly charged.
This attitude is sickening. Virtues as perseverance, resourcefulness and selflessness are hard to come by among the politicians. They are quick to throw diatribe at anyone opposed to their point of view. A case in point is the ongoing altercation involving a coalition of opposition politicians angling for the registration of a new political party, with INEC on one hand and the PDP on the other hand over eligibility for registration or otherwise of the newly formed party, the All Progressive Congress (APC).
INEC, the agency saddled with the statutory responsibility of registering political parties has repeatedly announced to the facilitators of APC that another political party with the same acronym, the African Peoples Congress has already been registered with the electoral umpire, but the conveners of the All Progressive Congress are not persuaded.
The fact is that what makes a political party popular is not the name or acronym but the character of the men and women that constitute its membership and the programme. Besides, I have no doubt that there are imaginative minds among the Progressives’ fold with the capacity to conceive an alternative name with an equally scintillating acronym as the rejected APC, which will be acceptable to INEC and thus put an end to the ongoing bickering and mutual recrimination resulting from INEC’s rejection of the name. After all, by whatever name rose is called, it will have a pleasant smell.
• Comrade Akido Agenro,
Iju-Ishaga, Lagos.
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