Politics
SALIHU Lukman, Director-General, Progressive Governors Forum (PGF) says the leadership of All Progressives Congress (APC) must work towards institutionalising the party so that it can continue to lead.
Lukman said this in a statement on Wednesday in Abuja.
He said the efforts will be in line with President Muhammadu Buhari`s request after the verdict of Presidential Election Tribunal, affirming his victory at the Feb. 23, 2019 presidential election.
“As loyal party members, we should be able to appeal to our leaders to respect the wishes of the president by taking necessary steps to institutionalise the party, which is about the development of its bureaucracy,’’ he said.
Lukman said that the starting point should be to strengthen the commitment of leaders produced by APC to consider rational political proposals and recommendations as well as their implementation once decided.
“As Nigerians, we must wake up to the reality that there could not be a strong democracy without strong political parties.
“Once our political leaders are unable to orient themselves to respect and recognise proposals from party’s bureaucracy, they will be weak in respecting, recognising or working with proposals from government bureaucracies when elected into offices,’’ he said.
Lukman stressed that there was no shortcut to these issues.
He added that to develop the needed democratic consciousness within the hierarchy of political leaders, focus should be on issues that would support the development of strong bureaucracies in parties.
He noted that what existed as bureaucracies in political parties was highly fragile and can hardly guide the processes of decision making and implementation.
Lukman maintained that the reason for public debates before important decisions by political parties had to do with the combined reality of lack of competent utilisation of party rules.
This, he said, was especially in directing processes of internal party decision making, as well as the absence of competent personnel to guide processes of implementation of decisions.
He said it was unfortunate that almost every situation requiring political decisions was allowed to degenerate to the level of manifest: paradox of democratic dysfunction before decisions were taken.
This, he said, often got interpreted based on subjective biases even when rational considerations may have guided the decisions of political leaders.
Lukman said most times, it was easy to make remarks about the need to build strong institutions in the country.
“Even as committed activists and leaders, we usually reduce these issues to general remarks,” he said.
He said such remarks hardly focus on important issues of building political parties as viable democratic institutions with strong bureaucracies that were capable of guiding processes of political decisions.
He said that the attraction or priority was always about processes of elections and who eventually emerge winner, adding that whether bureaucracies were able to competently play their expected roles in guiding political decisions and implementation was hardly the focus.
The PGF DG, however, added that APC leadership should be commended for recognising the party`s challenges and taking appropriate steps to resolve them.
“For us in APC, we must always celebrate the honest disposition of our leaders, on account of which they are able to recognise challenges and take appropriate steps to resolve them,’’ he said.
NAN
Jan 13, 2020 @ 15:59| GMT
Tags: PGF DG wants APC institutionalised
