How APC Was Formed and the Political Parties That Merged to Create It

Last checked: 13 October 2026. This article is a neutral explainer based on published reports. It does not endorse any party or candidate, and where accounts conflict it says so.

The All Progressives Congress did not begin as a single movement. It was assembled from several existing parties, each with its own base, leaders and history. Understanding who joined, why they joined and how the deal was reached explains much about the party’s later strengths and tensions.

The four groups at the centre

• Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN). A south-western-based party associated with Bola Tinubu. According to Bayo Onanuga, a Tinubu aide, it governed six states at the time of the merger.
• Congress for Progressive Change (CPC). Founded to carry Muhammadu Buhari’s presidential ambitions. It filed for registration on 26 March 2009 and was registered on 28 December 2009. Buhari left the ANPP and joined it in March 2010. Onanuga says it governed just one state.
• All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP). An older party with a base mainly in the north, which Onanuga says held three or four states.
• A faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA). APGA was formed in 2002 and is strongest in Anambra State. Only a breakaway faction joined the merger.

Later, in November 2013, a group of serving governors and legislators who had left the PDP, known as the “new PDP”, joined the new party, so it also drew on defectors from the ruling party.

Why a merger?

Britannica says opposition to the PDP had been fragmented since 1999, which let the ruling party win repeatedly. Buhari’s loss in 2011, when he took about 12.2 million votes to Jonathan’s 22.5 million, underlined that no opposition party could win alone. Tinubu has said that the ACN and CPC tried and failed to agree a pact in 2011, and that the lessons from those talks shaped the discussions that resumed in 2013. Onanuga also says the talks between the ACN and CPC began as early as 2011.

The agreement

The merger was announced in February 2013. Wikipedia’s entry on Buba Galadima records that nine people signed the merger agreement. Galadima, then national secretary of the CPC, was one of them. The new party chose the name All Progressives Congress and applied to INEC for registration.

It did not go smoothly. In March 2013, two other associations, the African Peoples Congress and All Patriotic Citizens, also applied for registration using the APC acronym. Reports at the time described this as a move to thwart the opposition coalition. In April 2013, the party was reported to be considering changing its name to the All Progressive Congress of Nigeria to avoid complications. In the end, INEC approved the party on 31 July 2013 and withdrew the licences of the ACN, CPC and ANPP.

Disputed accounts of the deal

Insiders later gave conflicting versions of what was promised. Galadima, who later left and chaired a breakaway group called the Reformed APC, said that Buhari was against an alliance with Tinubu and that he himself organised it. Chief Bisi Akande, the first national chairman, wrote in his memoir that Buhari promised to pick Tinubu as his running mate in 2015, but later dropped the idea and asked for a list of names from the South-West, from which Yemi Osinbajo was chosen. Tinubu’s own account is that Osinbajo was proposed to Buhari as an excellent running mate. Supporters of Buhari have said he spoke only of partnering to remove the PDP. These accounts cannot all be true, and none of them can be independently checked here.

Leadership of the new party

Akande, a former governor of Osun State and an earlier deputy governor of Oyo State, became the interim national chairman and was instrumental in forming the party. He was succeeded in 2014 by John Odigie-Oyegun, who was supported by Tinubu according to Akande’s account. The party’s first major test was the 2014 presidential primary, which Buhari won.

What the merger gave the new party

• Geographic reach. The ACN was strong in the South-West and the CPC and ANPP in parts of the North.
• A single presidential candidate. The opposition no longer split its vote, and Buhari beat Jonathan by almost 2.6 million votes in 2015.
• Governors and lawmakers. The merger brought incumbents with experience and resources.

The costs of the merger

A party built from rivals inherited old disputes. Zoning of offices, tickets and appointments between former party blocs became recurring points of conflict, and some of the founding figures later left. By 2018, dozens of legislators had defected to the PDP, and the APC lost its majorities in the National Assembly.

What we could not confirm

• The exact number of states each legacy party controlled, because the figures come from a Tinubu aide.
• Which version of the 2014 running-mate negotiations is correct.
• The precise number of founders involved in the merger talks.

Frequently asked questions

Was the APC a new party or a merger? It was a merger of existing parties registered as a new party.

What happened to the legacy parties? INEC withdrew the licences of the ACN, CPC and ANPP when it registered the APC.

Who was the first chairman? Bisi Akande, as interim chairman.

Key takeaways

The APC was formed in 2013 by merging the ACN, CPC, ANPP and part of APGA, with defecting PDP governors joining later. The merger created a rival strong enough to win in 2015, but it also brought old rivalries into one party.

Sources checked

• Wikipedia entries on the APC, CPC, APGA and Buba Galadima
• Britannica and the APC’s official “About” page
• ThisDay, “Tinubu: How We Plotted PDP’s Ouster” and the Akande memoir coverage
• Arise News, interview with Bayo Onanuga
• Daily Asset, “APC at 13”