2023: Aside Buhari, no Nigerian politician controls 5m votes – PGF boss


Ahead of the 2023 general elections, Director General of the Progressives Governors Forum (PGF) and a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Salihu Moh Lukman, has declared that no Nigerian politician controls five million votes compared to President Muhammadu Buhari’s twelve millions ready voters.

Lukman also said some party leaders always using court cases to negotiate their return to power.

The PGF boss was reacting the recent court case instituted by the former national vice chairman of the APC in the South-south Helliad Eta.

The APC chieftain said the fact that President Buhari is serving his last term, requires some strategic succession arrangement within the APC, especially in order to guarantee the retention of all the electoral advantages.

“A major attribute is that political leaders are conquerors, while party members and ordinary citizens are the would-be conquered. Arguably, while in other parties, including the PDP, this is a well-established order, in APC, it is being highly contested. This is because since the emergence of APC, apart from the personality of President Muhammadu Buhari, no leader can be sure of emerging as a candidate of the party for any election. In the case of President Buhari, he has such a personal blessing that made him to attract at least 12 million votes in all the elections he contested since 2003. No leaders, whether in APC or out of APC can claim to be in control of 5 million votes.

“With President Buhari clearly out of the race for the position of Presidential candidate of APC in 2023, there is clearly a potential for a big internal contest in the party. The question is whether any of the power blocks within the party will take step to block internal contest and therefore emerge as the conqueror. In which case, the issue is really whether the APC leadership will allow the process of democratisation to ensure that leadership emergence both within the party and at wider political levels are determined based on the choices of party members and citizens.

Most of the public speculations around internal dynamics in APC today is basically informed by some strategic political expectations and leadership permutations. Unfortunately, a lot of these permutations seems to be oriented based on an approach that seek to strengthen the capacity of some leaders within APC to conquer the structures of the party.

“When members and leaders of the party, for instance, demand that issues of membership register of the party are resolved such that the party is able to have a credible and verifiable membership register, it is being interpreted to mean that some leaders of APC want to take over the party to promote their political ambition for 2023. Take over from who? Does it mean that those who claim to be in control of APC now have any credible and verifiable membership records? Why are they not able to make such records accessible to all party members and leaders?”

Lukman said there is no short cut to democratisation, adding that internal contests for leadership based on transparent process are irreducible minimum.

The PGF boss believed that once APC is able to institutionalise internal leadership contests some of the avoidable distractions based on manipulative strategies using both legal and extra-judicial strategies can be avoided.

“A simple legal audit of all legal the cases by party members and leaders against their parties, will show that, the objective is mainly to negotiate leadership positions. Even the recent suite instituted by Mr. Hilliard Eta, former APC National Vice Chairman, South-South, against the APC Caretaker Committee, it is basically aimed to negotiate the return of Mr. Eta to the leadership of the APC.

“Today, we have so-called party leaders who engineered the APC’s electoral disaster of 2019 in Rivers and Zamfara States, proudly threatening the party leadership with more litigations every time the fear not being able to win recognition as leaders of the party. Instead, of projecting themselves as democrats ready to contest and win or lose elections, we have politicians who are members of APC that are permanent plaintiffs in our courts.

“The most important question is, are we developing our parties to serve as institutional platforms to confirm that party members and citizens are the source of political power? Or are we going to allow a situation whereby some few party leaders continue to hold every available space for leadership contest in our party in captivity, based on which they are able to impose themselves and their proxies as candidates for elections? This is the dynamic playing out in APC. To the extent that such dynamic is making almost every leader and party member in APC uncomfortable, it project the democratic possibilities in APC.

“This means that no one can say with every confidence that this is the leader that will be thrown up at the end of the exercise. The associated question is whether our leaders in APC are democrats ready to engage the process by presenting their aspirations and take every step to win the contests through attracting votes of fellow party members? Or will they instead take steps to sabotage the democratic opening up of the party, using every means, including judicial process?

“In the end the struggle for justice and democracy will always triumph. The contest for leadership everywhere and at levels of human society is real and given. Democracy is indeed a way of life!”

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