From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
The Director-General, All Progressives Congress (APC) Progressive Governors Forum (PGF), Salihu Moh. Lukman, has said that the ruling party like any other organisation is not perfect but rather work in progress.
Speaking last weekend as a keynote presenter at a programme organised by the APC Correspondents, he argued that non-adherence to party manifesto is eroding the electoral viability of the ruling party.
Discussing the theme: “‘political Contestation in Nigeria: Challenges of benchmarking party manifesto, the PGF DG said that the responsibility of party member is responsibility is to constantly work to improve on the capacity of the party to grow and provide the platform to engage in political contests.
“Often, many of us make the mistake of imagining that our responsibility is to rationalise decisions of our party and our leaders. Yes, we need to justify and defend decisions of our party and our leaders to the best of our ability. At every opportunity we must lead the advocacy to promote our party and our leaders.
“Beyond that however, we must be in a position to protect the electoral advantages of our party. This is largely because once we lose those advantages, all the public attention we enjoy today, will disappear. Therefore, as much as we should defend and promote decisions of our leaders, we must do so bearing in mind that in the end, politics is about serving citizens,” he quipped.
While arguing that the party is still work in progress, Lukman said: “In any event, we must remember that like any human organisation, our party is not perfect, and our responsibility is to constantly work to improve on the capacity of the party to grow and effectively provide us with the platform to be able to engage in political contests. In other words, our party is work-in-progress.
“The strong test of whether we are growing our party such that our leaders remain faithful to the commitment to service is whether we are taking all the necessary steps to respond to the demands of citizens. Inability to respond to the demands of citizens alienate leaders and erode electoral viability. Most times, we imagine that resort to propaganda can resolve our societal and national challenges.
“This is very wrong. We can do all the propaganda and take over all the media spaces in our constituencies and in the country, it will not change the reality facing citizens. This is mainly because propaganda that is not founded on strategic and concrete responses to our societal and national problems, will not improve the lives of citizens,” he argued.
Urging the party to go beyond electoral contest, he said: “At another level, there is also the narrow perspective, limiting political contestation to only electoral contests. As much as this is the case, we restrict ourselves to appearances and claims of politicians. The true substance or content of politicians and how they will perform when elected, which will determine policy choices may only be speculated based on estimation of past experiences. The truth, however, is that the dynamic of public life is completely different and no matter the level of experiences, factors that would influence decisions of politicians when in office are far more complex than what their past suggest.
“Part of the assumptions that democracy is founded on the logic that political parties should have manifestos, which should highlight ideological orientations and commitments of leaders and members, is just redundant in our context.
“Any close observer will recognise that although there is a document called party manifesto, party members, including leaders are hardly committed, in fact, many are hardly conversant with provisions of their party’s manifesto.
“To a large extent, this account for why initiating policies and programmes based on provisions of the manifesto is weak. How many party members, including leaders have actually gone through the party manifesto? How many party leaders are actually able to develop perspectives, which will highlight policy choices in lines with provisions of the party manifesto?
“The consequence of all of these is that the only political contest that take place is electoral contest, which is just about personalities. To go beyond electoral contests means that debate on perspectives should highlight possible choices open to governments. Our party, APC, was able to debate, negotiate and agree on some baseline proposals as responses to our numerous national challenges during the merger negotiation and during the 2015 and 2019 campaigns.
“These are clearly contained in our manifesto. We should recall that once we won the election in 2015, our transition committee did a lot of work and prepared plans of action for implementation. In addition, we had a major policy conference, which further provided additional perspectives that guided the policy priorities of the APC government led by President Buhari,” he said.