By Jude Opara, Abuja
A former National Vice Chairman (North West) of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Salihu Moh. Lukman has cautioned the leaders of the party against losing the meaning of being a progressive entity.
Lukman in an open letter to the leaders of the party captioned; “Burden of Leadership: Open Letter to APC Leaders”, accuses successive leaders of the party of majorly engaging in power grabbing and cornering public funds for their personal use, while reducing the electorates to mere servants.
“Politicians easily get tempted into believing that once they can get into political office, they have been vested with the powers of becoming overlords and do as they wish, converting public resources into personal wealth. In other words, they become bosses and electorates reduced to being servants. In the process losing the essential requirement qualifying them to serve as leaders of the people.
“One good example is how we all worked hard to produce the APC, campaigned for the defeat of PDP, only to produce a government in which both party leaders and other Nigerians had almost zero influence in terms of its decisions whether with respect to people it appoints or even its policies. Party leaders cheapened themselves into acquiring cheap advantages of accessing elective or appointive positions on the platform of the party. Yet, this is supposedly a progressive party.
“Consequently, instead of producing a government that should have led the process of changing Nigeria, which was our campaign promise in 2015, we ended with a government that is at best comfortable with all the realities we campaigned to change. Largely because our elected leaders are comfortable with realities of producing elected leaders who behave as overlords, APC elected leaders, since 2015, have failed to build the APC as a progressive political party, different from PDP and other parties. Interestingly, one of the elected leaders produced by APC was arguably one of the most popular politicians in the political history of the country. One would expect that at least, being very popular from the North, under his leadership, he will be able to provide the needed leadership to resolve most of the challenges facing the North. Without going into any judgmental assessment, the North is possibly worse off under his leadership. If anything, certainly the problem of insecurity in the North outlived his leadership”.
The prolific writer further urged all the members of the party to take responsibility of the apparent failure of the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari, even as he gave a grim verdict that the present administration of President Bola Tinubu will not really be different from the Buhari government.
“Whatever was the shortcomings of the APC under the leadership of former President Muhammadu Buhari, party members and leaders are culpable in varying degrees. Perhaps, our major guilt is the expectation that a successor administration produced by the party will correct those shortcomings and return the APC to the path of producing a progressive government, which will be inclusive and manage the affairs of the country based on strategy of mobilising Nigerians to participate in initiatives of rebuilding the country. Integral to that is the task of returning the APC to its founding vision of becoming a progressive political party. Contrastingly, we have produced another closed government, which is anything but progressive”.
He said President Tinubu’s decision to ensure that the positions at the 10th National Assembly were evenly spread did not go down well with some elements within the party from the North whom he said have not been able to form a kind of synergy with the President.
“Perhaps, that could have been partly responsible for the complete lack of attempt to forge a united front with President Asiwaju Tinubu and party leaders from North in terms ensuring that the successor to Sen. Abdullahi Adamu as APC National Chairman is produced through consultations.
“With Sen. Adamu coming from Nasarawa State, North-Central, ideally provisions of Article 31.5(i) of APC Constitution should have been activated to get the APC State Executive Committee in Nasarawa State to nominate a replacement from the state. Instead, unilaterally, President Asiwaju Tinubu nominated Dr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje from Kano State without even consulting APC leaders from North-West. One would expect that with former President Buhari coming from North-West, at the minimum President Asiwaju Tinubu should have consulted him on the choice of Dr. Ganduje as National Chairman. It is very doubtful if that was done”.
According to him, the party is gradually becoming an entity limited to producing candidates for elections in which Governors and some anointed party leaders in states without APC government exercise prerogatives beyond any rational expectations associated with any democracy.
