As the coast gets clear for the conduct of a national convention to elect the National Working Committee (NWC) of the All Progressive Congress (APC), a chieftain of the party, Salihu Lukman has set agenda for the new leadership that would emerge.
Lukman particularly demanded the collation of electronically based data of all members of the party across the country and making the National Secretariat functional to relate with other strata down to the ward.
The Director of the Progressives Governors Forum (PGF) made these suggestions while featuring on an AIT programme, JIGSAW to give insights into his recently launched book: ‘APC Litmus Test’.
He said APC must be run democratically for the party’s organs to have the opportunity to discharge their functions unlike what was obtained in the botched Adams Oshiomhole-led NWC which relegated the structures to the background.
Lukman asserted that the internal crisis that rocked the party was not a problem experienced only by the APC alone, saying as a convergence of people from diverse backgrounds and interests, there are bound to be minor disagreements which do not necessarily mean that the party will implode.
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“It is important to return to the basic framework that every party is an organization that has various interests. It is difficult to have a political party where people do not have diverse interests. But the most important is to have and build a party where the aggregation of the various interests will be able to win the mandate.
“The major issue is that even before the merger, there is the notion that parties do not have the power to win the confidence of the people as it were. I also do not think that while negotiating for the meager, nobody believed it was going to be a party that can appeal to everybody. Even some people in the meager had sympathy for the PDP then,” he said.
The APC chieftain lauded the Governor Mai Mala Buni-led Caretaker Committee of the party for the manner it has been organising the party congresses saying moving forward, it will be difficult for any individual to hijack the organs of the party at the ward level.
“The Caretaker Committee has taken a very excellent decision based on the logic that the framework is to ensure that everybody is registered in the party, so when they took the decision to that there should be a consensus, it is a departure from the old framework whereby people with financial muscle will go and ensure they win elections at congress level.
“Now the Caretaker Committee said everybody must be represented and that is the whole idea, so if every block is represented, you don’t have started departing from the old framework where the person who has the muscle will come and take over all the leadership and when you come to do primaries, that person is already guaranteed, now it is no longer the case, everybody will now be represented, ” Lukman added.
