Salihu Lukman, the immediate past Vice Chairman, North-West of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has raised concern over President Bola Tinubu’s commitment fight corruption in Nigeria.
In an open letter addressed to Tinubu titled “Disturbing Signals: An Open Letter to President Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu,” the former member of the APC National Working Committee declared that the emergence of former Kano state governor, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, as national chairman of the ruling party was an astonishing revelation that the present administration has no commitment to prosecute anti-graft-war.
Lukman also argued that the nomination of the former Kano state governor, incidentally from the North West zone, to replace Senator Abdullahi Adamu from Nasarawa state in the North Central zone as chairman was a breach of Article 31.5(i) of the APC Constitution.
The provisions read in part: In the case of a national or zonal officer, the State Executive Committee shall propose a replacement to the State Congress and Zonal Executive Committee for endorsement. Thereafter, the name shall be sent to the National Working Committee, which shall forward it to the National Executive Committee for approval”.
The immediate past Director General of the Progressives Governors Forum maintained that while Osun State was allowed to bring a replacement for Senator Iyiola Omisore, who resigned as national secretary, Nasarawa State was stripped of the privilege accorded it by virtue of the Party Constitution.
“To be honest, making Dr. Ganduje National Chairman of the APC is the first disturbing signal. Many party members are yet to recover from that shock. With all the uncleared corruption allegation against Dr. Ganduje, you opted to nominate him to become the National Chairman of the party even when Article 31.5(i) of the constitution of the APC clearly gave the Nasarawa State Executive Committee the power to nominate who should replace Sen. Abdullahi Adamu. Given that Sen. Umaru Tanko Al-Makura is from Nasarawa State and has been very loyal to you, it is scandalous that you will opt for Dr. Ganduje with all the baggage of corruption allegations against him. Recall that before the March 2022 APC National Convention, Sen. Al-Makura aspired to become APC National Chairman, and President Buhari was influenced to nominate Sen. Adamu over Sen. Al-Makura partly because he was alleged to be loyal to you. It defies every logical reasoning that you will ignore the provision of Article 31.5(i) to nominate Dr. Ganduje, even when the same provision of the constitution was used to nominate Sen. Basiru Ajibola from Osun State as replacement of Sen. Iyiola Omisore.
“The emergence of Dr. Ganduje as National Chairman of the APC sends the disturbing signal of being weakly committed to fighting corruption. This is very troubling and is neither representative of the interests of APC members nor of the wider interests of Nigerians. If our democracy is to develop to the point of being capacitated to resolve our national challenges, the commitment of our leaders to fighting corruption must never be in doubt.
“That our leaders in APC accepted the emergence of Dr. Ganduje as APC National Chairman without much resistance produces the second disturbing signal. This is because the absence of resistance was more a reflection of fear, which is the new reality in APC. Once leaders and members of the APC continue to feel threatened when they express opposition against your decision, we may end up with the bigger danger of creating a police state. This may not arise from any conscious decision coming from you but will be produced by the circumstances of having to rationalize or enforce your decisions, which may not be acceptable to party members and citizens. In fact, the first casualties of such a reality will be fellow party members.
“Largely because of the atmosphere of fear surrounding the emergence of Dr. Ganduje as National Chairman, the wider debate of using the vacancies created to respond to the challenge of inclusivity given that we won the 2023 election with a Muslim-Muslim ticket was lost. Rather than even attempting to respond to that challenge and demonstrate that truly we only invoke the Muslim-Muslim ticket as an electoral strategy, in a very insensitive manner, we imposed another Muslim-Muslim scenario in the party with the National Chairman and National Secretary both Muslims. And we want to claim we are a progressive party? What is the brand of our progressive politics? Certainly not the one that Nigerians expect, which endears us to citizens on account of which Nigerians gave us the mandate to manage the affairs of government since 2015.”
The former national officer of the Party also expressed strong reservations about the quality of ministerial nominees already cleared by the Senate, noting that “political consideration eclipsed any other factor.”
“The third disturbing signal is the quality of your appointees. Sincerely, Your Excellency, throughout the 2023 electoral campaigns, one of the strong campaign points was that you know how to find talents. When it took you more than eight weeks to nominate your Ministers, the belief was that you were taking your time to identify indisputably proficient people. With due respect to all those you nominated, many party members and, by extension, Nigerians were disappointed. It is clear to any discerning mind that political consideration eclipsed any other factors; definitely, no argument about talent can be sustained. As it is, both as party members and as Nigerians, our expectation from your government has crashed.”
