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…Party’s former legislators predict APC’s 60-year dominance
From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
The National Chairman of All Progressive Congress (APC), Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, has declared that the ruling party will never oppose the execution of constituency project by the members of the National Assembly.
Ganduje hinged the resolution on what he described as the expectations and preference constituency members placed on project more than the quality of legislation from their representatives.
He dropped the hint when he hosted former National Assembly Members Forum in Abuja on Thursday, observing that the party is happy with the the quality of constituency projects the legislators carried out.
Hos words: “There is no doubt we are so happy to have you here. As members of National Assembly legislators, psychologically, you are alway nostalgic about legislation and sociologically, you are bounded by esprit de corps.
“You can see how important you are. In fact, National Assembly is only the first casualty to military rule. Therefore, since we are lucky for many decades now, we are experiencing democracy, it is your responsibility to consolidate National Assembly, whether you are inside or outside. The psychological thing that bind you together should continue.
“That is why we are so happy with the project of legislative project in there constituency projects. Even though some are asking why constituency project, an ordinary voter would like to see something on ground. Even when your main function is to make laws and oversight functions, an ordinary voter doesn’t want to know how legislation is affecting his life. He doesn’t see how oversight function is affecting his life, he can easily see a constituency project whether it is a borehole, whether building of school, building clinic and so many other things.
“So, we think it is very important, weather you are from third, fourth and fifth Assembly, when you see your constituency project when you are elected, you feel very happy and satisfied,” he quipped in defence of controversial constituency projects.
Speaking earlier, Leader of the delegation of the former House members, Hon. Ibrahim Zailani, had expressed confidence that the ruling party will retain power at the centre for 60 years.
While stressing that Ganduje has the capacity to lead the party for a long period of time, Zailani, while expressing implicit confidence in the future of the ruling party, said: “We have no doubt in our mind that you will lead this party to continuously form government in the Federal Republic of Nigeria for more than 60 years, we know you can do it and we have absolute confidence that you can do it.
“As you can see, we are representing the country because all the six geopolitical zones are adequately represented here. We may not be in the House of Representatives now, but we want to tell you that all of us have the energy, the vision and the interest of the party at heart. So, we are offering ourselves for any party assignments.
“With this, we know from one of us, you may have a special place for either the legislators or former members of our forum, because we saw what you have done with one of our member who was your immediate past Commissioner for Finance.
“We want you to do more possibly pick one of our ladies and work with in the APC. On behalf of all of us, we thank you, we will continue to pray for you, to show our solidarity, to show our support because any support given to you, we are given to ourselves because we belong to all progressive Congress,” the forum leader said.
Responding, Ganduje said: “We thank you for coming, like you requested Inshallah, we should be able to and will be involving you in one activity or another, because you have the institutional memory when talking of anything dealing with political parties, dealing with conflict resolution, partying registration, dealing with election campaign, you have institutional memory about it and so you are more qualified than any other person.
“So, we hope we have the list of members, telephone numbers, states of origin, because we must use you from time to time because you are important partners in progress. I assure you, we view you as a very, important institution of our national diversity, national diversity and how to manage our national diversity is one of the cardinal principles of this administration,” Ganduje assured.
