Friday, June 10 2022

Ahead of the ruling party’s national convention, All Progressives Congress (APC), a party leader and chief executive of the Progressive Governors Forum (PFG), Salihu Moh Lukman, stressed the importance of electronic membership registration by the new National Working Committee. (NOC).

Lukman also explained other measures that he believes should be implemented for the APC to function more effectively as a truly progressive political party.

Speaking on an AIT, JIGSAW show where he explained his new book; APC Litmus Test Wednesday in Abuja, the APC leader said the recent internal crisis that has rocked the party does not necessarily mean the party will implode, adding that as a convergence of people from different backgrounds and d diverse interests, there are bound to be minor disagreements.

“I believe that as a party, immediately after the Convention, the first thing the new leadership should do is to have computerized membership data. We cannot continue to have a situation where our membership data is not stored electronically. We need to ensure that our membership data is updated electronically without the cumbersome process of processing it analogically.

“Secondly, we must have a national secretariat because membership is everything for a political party, a situation where the administrative framework of the national secretariat is so weak and loose that it is tied to what is available at the local government level. and the state and creates its own complications. So the first thing the new leadership has to do is to reorganize the national secretariat in such a way that it has this organic relationship between itself and all the structures of the party so that at the constituency level, even if someone leaves the party, it will be immediately known by the national leadership, and if someone joins the party, they should be quietly registered in the neighborhood without the noise of the media, it should be transparent .

He noted that even before and even immediately after the leanness that caused the APC, many analysts had thought the party would disintegrate, assuring that what appears to be the situation today will always be run by the party.

“It is important to return to the basic framework that each party is an organization with diverse interests. It’s hard to have a political party where people don’t have diverse interests. But the most important thing is to have and build a party where the aggregation of different interests can win the mandate.

“The major problem is that even before the lean, there is the notion that parties do not have the power to win the trust of the people so to speak. I also don’t think that when negotiating for the lean, no one believed that this would be a party that could please everyone. Even some people in the lean then had sympathy for the PDP.

“A fundamental question is the need to have a strong point on the need to establish reconciliation within the party. The main issue we have been emphasizing is that it is impossible to have a political party without a credible membership register. Fair enough, the Guardian Committee bought this idea and we did it and it’s the basis of the new book I’ve written. It is a contribution to help in an advisory capacity to help the leadership know what needs to be done to make the party speak to the people of Nigeria.

According to Lukman, the party should be run democratically where all organs have the opportunity to perform their functions contrary to what was achieved in the last National Working Committee (NWC) which did not work in tandem with the party books.

“It is necessary for the party to be democratic, which means that the organs of the party must meet regularly to make decisions; when talking about party supremacy, it is not the position of an individual leader that should serve as party supremacy when the bodies do not meet, which is the major problem with the last NWC, the National Executive Committee (NEC) was not meeting, the only body that met was the administrative body and it was difficult at the time to say now that the Party Constitution was respected.

“The second question is what we can call the ideological thrust of the party. This is the party that was designed as progressive, what it means to be progressive has to do with the ability to issue issues related to governance and politics and decisions in terms of what is in the best interests of the people. It’s a very difficult decision, they might not be attractive, but generally being progressive is about making popular decisions, it’s not about those cheap decisions that people make and that’s why my basic position is that these are not problems that can be sorted out if you don’t go back to laying a solid foundation on how the party recruits its members, for example, and it’s not just with the APC, it’s basically the same for all political parties.

“The relationship between political parties and Nigerians is so weak and that is the argument I am making in this book, it dwells on what kind of relationship the party should have with interest groups, stakeholders non-governmental organisations, youth organisations, women’s organisations, people with disabilities”.

The DG also took a peak at former governor Ali Modu Sheriff who boasted last week that the APC would rule the country for 40 years, describing such comments as far from what should come from a progressive politician .

“The other issue is how the party organizes itself, we can’t have a party where, for example, I recently saw someone aspiring to the party’s national presidency saying that the party needs a tough person to rule till 40. That’s not how a progressive should think, a progressive should think about how to endear themselves to citizens, it’s not a matter of how long you govern but how are you able to make yourself constantly loved by citizens If you say you want to govern for 40 years, it is a question of going to pressure the citizens so that they vote for you, that is from there we come in terms of election manipulation and what have you and it’s the brutal issues in terms of politics in Nigeria that will take time to change, and it’s not a one day thing it’s a journey of life and we must embark on this journey.

He also praised the interim committee headed by Governor Mai Mala Buni for the way it organized the party congresses saying that in the future it will be difficult for an individual to hijack party organs at the neighborhood level. .

“The interim committee made a very excellent decision based on the logic that the framework is to make sure that everyone is registered in the party, so when they made the decision that there should be consensus, it t’s a break from the old framework by which people with the financial muscle will go to make sure they win elections at the congressional level. Now the interim committee has said that everyone should be represented and that’s the whole idea so if every block is represented you haven’t started to deviate from the old framework where the person with the muscle will come in and take over all the leadership and when you come to do primaries that person is already guaranteed, now this is no longer the case, everyone will now be represented.

Amid rising insecurity in the country, Lukman said that contrary to insinuations, the insurgency was not the only issue troubling the country before 2015. He noted that despite the fact that there were cases of cattle rustling throughout the North as early as 2013 as well as kidnappings in the south of the country.

He noted that security was overstretched, adding that the country will continue to face some of these problems until a majority of Nigerians are properly and meaningfully engaged.

He added that governments at different levels must find a way to make positive use of the abundant human resources, as overreliance on oil revenue will not solve the problems.

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