By Nurat Uthman
A former National Vice Chairman, Northwest, of the ruling All Progressives Congress APC, Salihu Moh. Lukman has asked President Bola Tinubu to set annual targets for his ministers if his ‘Renewed Hope’ agenda must translate into tangible gains for Nigerians.
Noting that such targets and attendant performance review would help to keep his appointees on their toes, Lukman said, APC must unambiguously guarantee social justice and equitable distribution of resources and opportunities both within itself and as a party in control of governments at several levels in the country.
“Achieving this is what will translate into Renewed Hope for a Better Nigeria”, he said in a statement issued Wednesday in Kaduna.
According to him, for APC to emerge as a truly progressive party beyond bearing the name, President Tinubu’s government must be dynamic, action oriented and therefore competently able to improve on the quality of lives of Nigerians.
“What this requires at these early stages in the life of the administration is that the government must be able to set clearly defined targets, which must be achieved within the next four years. For instance, the government should define annual targets for all sectors and each mandate ministry led by the newly confirmed ministers should be given the responsibility to achieve them.
“Setting those targets and orienting all the newly elected and appointed APC representatives to apply themselves towards meeting them should not be taken for granted. In fact, once Ministers are sworn in and no ministerial targets are given to them by the President, the seed of failure would have been planted. Therefore, the first task before President Tinubu is ensuring that ministerial targets are given and putting in place stronger supervisory and regulatory framework both within government and as a party to ensure delivery”, said Lukman.
He said both party members and Nigerians should support President Tinubu to succeed in bringing APC back to its founding vision of emerging as a truly progressive party capable of regulating the conducts of all elected and appointed APC representatives to be accountable to citizens.
Lukman added that supporting President Tinubu should include being able to disagree with him when he takes any decision that is unjust to any section of the country.
“Both APC members and leaders, as well as Nigerians must be courageous in reminding President Tinubu that any claim of being progressive must guarantee social justice and equity, especially regarding distribution of resources and opportunities in all manifestations.
“All the challenges that confronted APC and the federal government since 2019 borders on the strong perception by many sections of Nigerians of unfair and inequitable treatment. Contentious as it may appear, being a democracy and especially as a party envisioned to be progressive, we must demonstrate sensitivity and responsiveness to these perceptions. We therefore must appeal to President Tinubu to demonstrate balanced commitment to providing truly progressive leadership to both the APC and the Nigerian nation as a whole.
“Providing progressive leadership to the APC will require President Tinubu to honestly resolve within himself whether under his leadership he wants to resolve the big political problem in the country whereby all our parties are reduced to only serving as an election platform”, he stated.
He said APC and its leadership must admit that between 2015 and now, it has moved further away from meeting these expectations, adding that internal contests within the APC has been weakened.
According to Lukman, efforts to resolve this problem especially since 2019 has created leadership instability within the APC.
“All the efforts to resolve the problems of the party end up further worsening the challenges. For instance, the decision to setup a Caretaker Committee under the leadership of Governor Mai Mala Buni on June 25, 2020 with a short tenure of six months produced a monstrous outcome of a sit-tight Caretaker Committee, which had to be forced out of office after 27 months.
“Similarly, the emergence of Sen. Abdullahi Adamu led NWC in March 2022 was expected to have resolved the leadership challenges facing the party. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case as the APC was plunged into deeper problems whereby all the statutory organs of the party became frozen and the NWC especially the National Chairman and National Secretary became emperors and highly unaccountable to anyone.
In addition, the leadership of Sen. Adamu became subversive and covertly antagonistic against Asiwaju Tinubu both during the internal contest to produce the Presidential candidate of the APC for the 2023 general elections and after Asiwaju Tinubu won the election and became the President-elect. For instance, instead of working in harmony with Asiwaju Tinubu as President-elect to nominate candidates for the leadership of the 10th National Assembly, Sen. Adamu opposed and undermined initiatives of Asiwaju Tinubu to produce the current leadership of both the Senate and House of Representatives.
“No doubt, these are bitter experiences within the APC that must be corrected. In correcting them however, are we focusing on the bigger question of restoring constitutional order, returning the party to its founding vision, and ensuring the development of the APC to be capable of regulating the conducts of elected and appointed representatives? Or is the objective reduced to question of producing simply loyal leaders who will only ensure successful implementation of what President Tinubu want as a leader of the party?”, He queried.
