From Desmond Mgboh, Kano
Kano State Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje has called for the immediate proscription of all pre-merger political groups and tendencies within the All Progressives Congress (APC), saying that their continued relevance was inimical to the growth of the party.
Governor Ganduje, who spoke on Monday at North West meeting of the Constitution Review Committee meeting of the APC in Kano, regretted that the party, years after its birth, was still a mixture of pre- merger parties and not yet a cohesive whole.
The governor also lamented the relegation of the party by elected officials soon after the conclusion of each election in Nigeria stating that this was the reason Nigeria democracy was yet to produce strong democratic institutions
‘In our culture, the culture of politics in Nigeria, the moment elections are over,party structures are abandoned , no participation, no interest until the next election….That is why our political parties have not developed into a strong institution,’ he stated.
He insisted there was no better time than now for a review of his party’s constitution, observing that APC had grown in size and strength since its inception and have been in control of the Federal Government as well as won elections in many states of the federation ever since.
He confessed that in this process, the party had equally made a number of mistakes, some of which resulted in the loss of states to the rival parties in the last, adding that it was high time for the party to look back at the operation of its constitution and fine tune some the grey areas.
The Chairman of the Constitution Review Committee for the North West Zone, Professor Tahir Mamman, in his remarks, admitted that the party was a product of merger, adding that this was bound to thrown up its own challenges with time even as he added the party’s constitution review exercise would look at all the various organs of the party and how best they would be fine tuned for the progress of the party.
The state party chairman of all the seven North- West states, including the members of the committee were in attendance.
