•Salihu Lukman
A former National Vice Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Salihu Lukman, has appealed to leading figures in the dominant opposition parties to bury their differences and subordinate their individual presidential aspirations to enable them to dislodge the ruling party.
Lukman, who incidentally was a former member of the APC National Working Committee, made the appeal at the weekend in a statement entitled, “Building Nigerian Democracy” made available to newsmen in Abuja.
The immediate past Director General of the Progressives Governors Forum, who dismissed the eight-year tenure of former President Muhammadu Buhari and the over-one-year stewardship of the incumbent, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as a disaster for Nigerians, called on the likes of Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi, and Rabiu Kwankwaso to fashion out modalities on forming a coalition to oust APC and Tinubu at the next general elections.
“At this point, it is important to appeal to our key opposition leaders to wake up and try to be compassionate and appreciate the gravity of the dire situation facing citizens. The big question is whether, on account of personal ambitions, we want to continue to mismanage our reality and sacrifice every opportunity, which ideally a democratic system offers.
“The opportunity that the democratic system offers is that any government which fails its citizens should be voted out. No doubt, by any standard, both President Tinubu and APC have failed Nigerians. It is quite disheartening that a party which came with all the promises of changing Nigeria for the better has ended up ruining the country. From the economy to problems of insecurity and corruption, which were the three cardinal challenges APC and former President Muhammadu Buhari promised to tackle in 2015, what we had in 2015 is a child’s play today.
“The hard truth is that both former President Buhari and President Tinubu have turned out to be self-centred and unable to produce the needed leadership to pull the country out of its current challenges. Certainly, all of us who were actively in support of these leaders never imagined that they would be such colossal failures.
“We have moved from being opposition politicians to becoming a ruling party since 2015. Sadly, as a ruling party, we have become worse than the PDP we defeated in 2015. Unlike in the days of the PDP that allowed for opposition parties to function, we are today confronted with the ugly and depressing reality whereby all the opposition parties are being manipulated into a deeper crisis of an existential nature.
“While the common enemy of all of them is the APC, and although conscious of all these leaders, alarmingly, the three leaders still think that they can succeed individually. I hope I am wrong. But I am increasingly becoming agitated that these leaders will, if not moderated, take us on the same old route of mismanagement due to personal ambitions.
“Beyond the key opposition leaders, we may perhaps need to put more focus on the second-generation opposition leaders. Who are these second-generation opposition leaders? These are the Yemi Osinbajos, Rotimi Amaechis, Kayode Fayemis, Nasir El-Rufais, Rauf Aregbesolas, Aminu Waziri Tambuwals, Ibikunle Amosuns, etc.
“From our experience with the APC, Nigerians are not interested in just the defeat of APC and President Tinubu in 2027. Clearly, what Nigerians are interested in is the defeat of APC and President Tinubu to produce a strongly democratic nation that is responsive to the needs of Nigerians.
“For that to be achieved requires the emergence of a strong political party that can regulate and direct the conduct of all elected representatives, especially the President of the Federal Republic. Nigerians are wary of just supporting the ambition of any person simply because we are unhappy with the performance of a serving president. What is it that accounts for the failure of APC, former President Buhari, and now President Tinubu? What is absent in the organisation of APC that made it worse than PDP? How can we produce a new party that can overcome the weaknesses of APC and guarantee that elected representatives produced by the new party, including the President, will not turn out to be emperors and overlords?”
