Politics
DIRECTOR General of the Progressive Governors Forum (PGF), Comrade Salihu Lukman has said leaders of the All Progressives Congress (APC) must embrace what he described as internal reconciliation if the party is to build a formidable front ahead of the 2023 general election.
Speaking with newsmen about his new book, Power of possibility and politics of change in Nigeria, he said the National Working Committee(NWC) of the party has the responsibility to drive this reconciliation.
He explained if the party continue on the current part of lack of forgiveness, it may have adverse effect on its chances.
Lukman said the party has achieved a lot of first in its short life span, which must be sustained, adding that the party must move to achieve yet another first by reconciling all aggrieved party members having being able to take over power from a sitting government and achieving a successful merger.
While describing the APC as work in progress, Lukman said the APC was blessed with a national Chairman who is one of the best negotiators in the country, adding that Comrade Oshiomhole must bring that negotiating skill to bear in trying to reposition the party for greater achievement.
He said further that one of the two things that must be done in trying to re-position the party is for its leaders and followers to accept offending each other and commit to the process of forgiveness.
He said the leaders of the party need to continue, just like they did during the merger process, commit to making sacrifice for the survival of the party, adding that “the sacrifice they have to make may be in the last election where they were denied the opportunity to contest election at various levels.
According to him: “We must begin to look forward and learn from the lessons learnt from that exercise. The future of this country depend on the ability of leaders to reconcile themselves. If APC can achieve that, they would have make another first.
“The National Working Committee has a bigger responsibility to drive tat reconciliation. Fortunately, we are blessed with one of the best negotiators in this country as our National Chairman. He must bring that his negotiating skill to bear.
“On our part as stakeholders of the party, we will work to engage our leaders to embrace reconciliation and recommendations bothering on that. We can only be a better country if our democracy is producing results that our people are happy with”.
While admitting there can be no politics without conflict, he said that issues around the 2015 election elections which were not properly resolved snowballed into the election and got compounded by the realities of the 2019 elections.
He identified party funding as one of the problems affecting the APC, but was quick to add that the issue of funding was not restricted to the APC alone as all political parties are expected to be self funding.
In the area of fighting corruption, he said the APC has done very well and has made alot of progress, adding that unlike the PDP that has not been able to complete its national secretariat complex, the APC has been able to purchase the building currently housing its national secretariat – The Nation
– July 26, 2019 @ 15:42 GMT |
Tags: APC must embrace reconciliation ahead of 2023 – Governors Forum DG
