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- Says Tinubu’s failure to set target for new ministers ‘ll plant seed for failure
From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Salihu Moh Lukman, has urged Nigerians to disagree with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu when he takes any decision that is unjust to any section of the country.
He also argued that President Tinubu’s failure to set target for the incoming ministers will be tantamount to planting seed of failure for his administration.
Lukman insisted that Nigerians cannot afford to go through the challenges of unfair and inequitable treatment that characterised and bedevilled the government of former president Muhammadu Buhari from 2019.
Commenting on the clearance of 45 ministerial nominees, Lukman, in a statement he made available to newsmen in Abuja on Wednesday, wrote:
“Again, both as party members and as Nigerians, we should support President Tinubu to succeed in bringing APC back to its founding vision of emerging as a truly progressive party capable of regulating the conducts of all elected and appointed APC representatives to be accountable to Nigerian citizens.
“Supporting President Tinubu should include being able to disagree with him when he takes any decision that is unjust to any section of the country. Both APC members and leaders, as well as Nigerians must be courageous in reminding President Tinubu that any claim of being progressive must guarantee social justice and equity, especially regarding distribution of resources and opportunities in all manifestations,” he noted.
On the onsequencies of not setting target for the Ministers, Lukman wrote: “For APC to emerge as a truly progressive party beyond bearing the name, President Tinubu’s government must be dynamc, action oriented and therefore competently able to improve on the quality of lives of Nigerians.
“What this requires at these early stages in the life of the administration is that the government must be able to set clearly define targets, which must be achieved within the next four years.
“For instance, the government should define annual targets for all sectors and each mandate ministry led by the newly confirmed ministers should be given the responsibility to achieve.
“Setting those targets and orienting all the newly elected and appointed APC representatives to apply themselves towards meeting them should not be taken for granted. In fact, once Ministers are sworn in and no ministerial targets is given to them by the President, the seed of failure would have been planted.
“Therefore, the first task before President Tinubu is ensuring that ministerial targets are given and putting in place stronger supervisory and regulatory framework both within government and as a party to ensure delivery,” the statement read.
Reacting further, the former ruling party’s Deputy Vice Chairman North-West said: “All the challenges that confronted APC and the federal government since 2019 borders on the strong perception by many sections of Nigerians of unfair and inequitable treatment.
“Contentious as it may appear, being a democracy and especially as a party envisioned to be progressive, we must demonstrate sensitiveness and responsiveness to these perceptions.
“We therefore must appeal to President Tinubu to demonstrate balanced commitment to providing truly progressive leadership to both the APC and the Nigerian nation as whole.
“Providing progressive leadership to the APC will require President Tinubu to honestly resolve within himself whether under his leadership he want to resolve the big political problem in the country whereby all our parties are reduced to only serving as an election platform.
“In 2012/2013, when under our old legacies parties, merger negotiations commenced, the expectation of many Nigerians was that the new party, APC, that emerged will depart from serving only as election platform. Especially, with the adoption of slogan “CHANGE”, expectation was high in the country that APC will distinguish itself as a democratic party and produce new model of party politics in the country.
“We must as a party admit that between 2015 and now, APC has moved further away from meeting these expectations. Internal contest within the APC has been weakened. Efforts to resolve this problem especially since 2019 has created leadership instability within the APC. All the efforts to resolve the problems of the party end up further worsening the challenges,” he claimed in the statement.
