By Miftaudeen Raji
A former National Vice Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Salihu Lukman, said the ruling party, APC has been reduced to an election platform that has produced some “disasters” . To stem the tide, he urged the party to publish its code of conduct for the party leaders and elected representatives.
Lukman stated this in an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Wednesday.
He said, “None of the Second Republic parties will allow what is going on in the case of Yahaya Bello for instance.
“This is why I keep raising the point about the APC coming up with a kind of code of conduct for elected representatives and leaders of the party because leadership is about trust.”
Lukman said the party has been reduced to an election platform that has produced some “disasters” as elected representatives because the party organs have failed to meet to discuss critical matters.
He said, “The national caucus was meeting almost every week before the 2015 election.”
He expressed concern that eight months into the administration of the former Kano Governor Abdullahi Ganduje as APC national chairman, the National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting of the APC has not taken place.
“Because we are faced with this reality, it presents an opportunity for the leaders of the party to really go back and renegotiate the party because when you have a political party that doesn’t meets, it’s as good as not having a party; we are reduced to another election platform.
“The danger is that even in managing an election platform, we have produced almost a disaster,” Lukman said.
He added that the mismanagement of political relations has been the reason incumbent governors have been rubbishing their predecessors, despite being members of the same political party.
Lukman said the corruption allegations facing Ganduje in Kano has political undertones, arguing that only a political solution would solve it.
He said the troubles facing Ganduje in Kano has to do with his fall-out with Rabiu Kwankwaso.
He described the long-term dispute between Ganduje and Kwankwaso “as an avoidable crisis which emerged because the party didn’t handle it well,” making Kwankwaso exit the ruling party.
He said, “We must push Dr Abdullahi Ganduje to renegotiate relationships back in his state because it’s (the crisis is) political. If you don’t approach it politically, you will never take it away.
You can replace Dr Abdullahi Ganduje and if the capacity to get leaders to do the right thing in their base is not addressed, we will continue to get into this.”
Recall that Ganduje and some of his family members are being probed by EFCC over corruption charges, while the matter is still in court.
In the wake of the EFCC probe, some APC ward chieftains suspended Ganduje. But the matter was greeted by conflicting court judgements.
The APC disowned the party chieftains to affirm Ganduje as the party’s national chairman.
Like Ganduje, who has a case to answer in court, Bello, also an APC chieftain, has a case before the court.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is prosecuting Bello, the immediate-past Governor of Kogi State on 19 counts bordering on alleged money laundering, breach of trust, and misappropriation of funds to the tune of N80.2 billion.
The EFCC chief said Bello withdrew $720,000 from the state’s accounts to pay his child’s school fees in advance just before he left office on January 27, 2024.
The anti-graft commission has since declared Bello wanted after a failed attempt to arrest him in his Abuja residence.
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