Salihu Lukman, a former vice chair of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has expressed concern that the ruling party is setting itself up for failure in future elections.
In a statement on Sunday, Lukman emphasized the importance of the party’s leaders heeding calls for a change in leadership to avoid electoral defeat.
He pointed out that the party’s failure to listen to internal voices in the past resulted in the formation of the new Peoples Democratic Party (nPDP) in 2013.
“Painfully, in the process, a party that emerged with so much promise, the APC, winning the support of Nigerians is almost destroyed and on a daily basis creating conditions for its own electoral funeral,” he said.
“As loyal members of the APC, we must remind our leaders that parties become more prone to electoral defeat when they resist or block internal pressures for leadership change.
“APC’s electoral victory in 2015, for instance, could be partly explained based on the refusal of PDP leadership to recognise and respect the yearnings of party members and leaders.
“It was the inability to respect internal yearnings for change that produced the splinter group of New PDP, which eventually joined the merger that produced APC in 2013.”
According to him, individuals like President Bola Tinubu and Adams Oshiomhole, who played a significant role in the fight for democracy in the 90s, should take responsibility for ensuring that Nigeria’s political parties are genuinely democratic.
“Being leaders of APC, APC must emerge as a distinctly democratic party based on abiding respect for rule of law, which should be well reflected in a strong commitment to manage affairs of the party based on compliance with provisions of the APC,” he said.
“Anything short of this, will diminish the credentials of our leaders, including President Asiwaju Tinubu and Comrade Oshiomhole.”
