Salihu Lukman, has cautioned Senator David Mark-led national leadership of the opposition African Democratic Congress, ADC, against god-fatherism and imposition among the leaders at all levels.
Lukman, who was a former Director General of the Progressive
Governors Forum, PGF said already most ADC leaders have started behaving as if
the 2027 elections is a walkover.
In a statement released Tuesday in Abuja, titled “ADC and
the Prospect of Internal Democracy”, Mallam Lukman said when the national
leadership positions of ADC were shared to zones, coalition leaders who were
only nominees into the Committee that negotiated the sharing arrangement,
promoted themselves into becoming the leaders of their zones.
While acknowledging Senator David Mark’s leadership which
enabled the party to seal the agreement that produced the result of the
emergence of new leadership of the ADC, Lukman said: “The truth is that the
negative side of almost all our opposition political leaders is already at
play. Many are taking steps to manipulate the process of leadership reformation
of the ADC. Loyalists are being promoted in a manner that suggests perhaps the
2027 elections is already won.
“The struggle to ensure that loyalists of leaders emerged as
the leaders of the reformed ADC to some extent disregard the consideration for
intellectual capacity, integrity, performance track records, name recognition
across all demographics, respect in community and political circles, independent
mindedness and general acceptability to all or majority of stakeholders, which
we agreed to.
“We must caution our leaders, Nigerians will not be deceived
by any cosmetic design of presenting another party, which is only a duplicated
our old parties. With the way things are going, coalition leaders will emerge
as godfathers, and the next thing is that they will impose their surrogates at
all levels as leaders of the ADC.
“This will naturally be followed by anointing preferred
candidates for 2027 elections. Therefore, the first test of Sen. Mark’s
leadership of the party is the extent to which he can mitigate all these and
ensure that ADC is not a party that will be controlled by godfathers.”
According to the Kaduna born politician, another very
important challenge is the question of steps to be taken by the Sen. Mark’s
leadership to provide new orientation to party administration at all levels.
“For instance, will the reformed ADC take steps to develop a
competent bureaucracy in the party Secretariat with established rules and
professionally staffed? Or will the party leaders recruit their loyalists as
staff in the party Secretariat? Will the ADC develop the needed capacity to
mobilise all the financial resources required for the operations of the party,
including election financing? Or will the party operate based on the old
tradition of relegating its funding to depend on the generosity of leaders?
“The other critical question that Nigerians anxiously await
initiatives of the Sen. Mark leadership is the issue of the direction the party
intends to take towards addressing the challenges facing the country. With the
painful experience under APC whereby ahead of the 2015 elections, APC presented
a delightful manifesto with all the promises, but ended up disregarding it once
elections are won, what will be different with ADC? What is even the manifesto
of ADC? When we negotiated with the former leadership of ADC under Chief Ralph
Nwosu, one of the agreements we reached was to have a new manifesto. What steps
will be taken by the Sen. Mark leadership to produce a new ADC manifesto. Or
will the new leadership allow the tradition whereby candidates for elections
produce their individual manifestos, with hardly any bearing on the party’s
manifesto?”
The statement added that Sen. Mark’s leadership is beyond
producing candidates and winning the 2027 elections.
“For those of us who spearheaded the process of negotiating
the coalition and producing ADC as the party for the envisioned internally
democratic party, whether we are part of the national leadership or not, we
must remain united within the coalition to continue to engage the leadership of
Sen. Mark to ensure they succeed. If, for any reason, we allow them to fail, we
have equally failed. The prospect of succeeding is much stronger. However, it
all depends on the extent to which we are ready to continue to make the
sacrifices required.
“Maybe we should also remind ourselves that politics is
local. This requires that we all move back to our states and ensure that ADC at
that level is run democratically based on collective leadership.
“In many states, this is already being threatened. Many high
profile political leaders, especially former Governors are taking steps to
serve as godfathers in ADC and leaders at these levels are reduced to acting as
the members of cabinet or members of board of parastatal of government in which
powerful politicians and former Governors are the Chief Executive Officers.
“Although faced with a lot of disadvantages, those of us who
suffer the disadvantage of not being godsons of these high-profile politicians
must take every necessary step to win the confidence of citizens at that level.
“Coming from Kaduna State, we must take every necessary step
to discontinue the political culture of divisive politics of religion and
ethnicity. Any political leader who is associated with past divisive politics
in the state must commit to reforming himself as basis for working with us in
the effort to reform the ADC and make it a party that promotes a new united
Kaduna State. Based on the transitional operational guidelines provided by the
ADC national leadership, the process of instituting an all-inclusive leadership
at state level and all the 23 local governments and 255 wards in state should
commence. We appeal to all political leaders to relate with everyone who
qualifies to be part of the transitional leadership of ADC at all levels in the
State with respect and high measure of tolerance. We must commit ourselves to
making ADC an equal opportunity platform at all levels. Anything short of this
should be resisted.”
Lukman expressed confident that ADC can become the
envisioned internally democratic party.
“First thing first, the Sen. Mark leadership must rise to
its calling and give the party and Nigerians a new template in political party
management in the country. The prospect of achieving that should be
evidentially established within the next six months. Anything to the contrary
should mean that the ADC and the coalition have failed and we should abstain
from participating in the 2027 elections. May God strengthen the capacity of
Sen. Mark and his team to provide the needed leadership for us to succeed in
making ADC the envisioned internally democratic party.”
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