Browsing: Salihu Moh. Lukman

It is therefore necessary that at this very early stage of negotiating new leadership for the APC, we caution all our leaders that the only way we can justify the exit of Adamu and Omisore out of the leadership of the party is by demonstrating commitment to restore constitutional order and return the party to its founding vision of being a progressive party. 

Specifically, INEC will have the direct responsibility of transmitting all election results electronically. This would include developing all the technological infrastructure, procurement and installations of all the hardware and software as well as recruitment and training of all the personnel requirement for the electronic transmission of electoral results.

If anything, the lesson from the 2019 elections, which every APC leader and member should be reminded, is that APC was defeated in Rivers, Zamfara, Bauchi, Adamawa, Oyo and many other places by aggrieved APC leaders who worked against candidates or leaders of the party as a result of internal disagreements around candidate selections for Governorship of these states.

The challenge of adopting a shared understanding of what it will take to build a progressive party requires introspection and tolerance. Leaders have to be able to debate, critique and compete freely without being discourteous or criminalising each other.

It was the late economist, John Kenneth Galbraith, in the book: “The Nature of Mass Poverty,” who warned that: “Poverty is man’s (and woman’s) most powerful and massive affliction. It is the progenitor of much further pain – from hunger and disease on to civil conflict and war itself.” In our case in Nigeria, beyond our self-inflicted ethnic and religious conflicts, poverty is also at the root of all the kidnappings, abductions and banditry.

Another gentleman, on the platform of Prof. Toyin Falola-facilitated USA Africa Dialogue Series, asked the questions: “Are the parties (APC and PDP) anything more than instruments for capturing power? Do they have any significant ideological values? Are their members not the same people who have crisscrossed parties in the name of where to gain power?”