Director General of the Progressives Governors Forum (PGF), Mohammed Salihu Lukman has called on our members of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to give peace a chance and support the National Caretaker Committee of the party to complete it’s process to reposition and return peace to the APC
Lukman in a statement he issued Thursday in Abuja described the committee’s decision to commence the process of membership registration/verification by the APC as a good gesture that aimed at handing over a new APC to the incoming National Working Committee
He regretted that a group of party stakeholders have threatened to drag the committee to court, insisting that they either conduct an elective Convention or quit office in December
“Ideally, the brewing debate in APC around membership registration should be healthy. If anyone doubt that APC is a party that accommodate internal debate and contestation, this is another evidence. But this is one contestation that can only survive if party members shy away from engaging these leaders. We will engage this debate with the objective of ensuring that the overarching consideration is the development of our party and our democracy.
“The debate must go beyond schemes to subordinate the party under the control or manipulation of anybody.
“Therefore, one will expect any leader of the party with any claim of being a progressive or even democratic politician to welcome the need to have membership registration/verification ahead of the APC National Convention.
“In fact, even after membership registration/verification, before we can satisfy that there are legal delegates for any National Convention, APC would require Ward, Local Government and State Congresses.
“These Congresses need to hold ahead of the National Convention to affirm that the delegates to attend the National Convention have the authority of party members. With such reality, the debate should be about how to conduct both the membership registration and congresses in ways that assist in resolving the lingering leadership crisis in the party.
“Sadly however, it would appear that it is the old challenge of ensuring that the party remained with crisis-prone approaches based on some tight-fisted control of party structures by some leaders. This means, the design is not about laying strong foundation for the party based on which the rules of the party are the reference point but instead ensuring that the party is controlled by some designated leaders whose only objective is to manipulate the process of candidate selection for elections. These so-called leaders advocating for APC to have National Convention without going through the process of membership registration/verification simply want to plant their surrogates as the new leaders of the party. To achieve that, false arguments are being presented that the National Convention of the party doesn’t require membership registration.
Lukman. noted further that “While it is important to appreciate the need to ensure that the provisions of our party’s constitution are respected by everyone, especially the Caretaker Committee, which has the difficult responsibility of resolving our leadership challenges, it is important that the right thing is done to lay solid democratic foundation for our party.
How can any organ of the party claim any legitimacy when the membership of the party is suspect? If the membership of the party is suspect, the legitimacy of delegates who will attend the National Convention will be also suspect.” He argued.
