From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
Former national vice chairman, North West of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Salihu Moh Lukman, has predicted that displaced politicians like Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi, Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi, Kayode Fayemi and others jostling to become president will be worse than former and presidents, Goodluck Jonathan, Muhammadu Buhari and incumbent Bola Tinubu.
In a statement to officially react to the backlash that trailed the comments of the political leaders at last week’s National Conference on Strengthening Democracy held in Abuja, he noted that the discomforting reality is that while all the opposition and displaced politicians agree on the need to work together to defeat the APC and President Tinubu, many want to do so on the conditions that they will emerge as his successors.
“Just imagine Atiku Abubakar or Mr. Peter Obi or Mr. Rotimi Amaechi or Dr. Kayode Fayemi or Senator Aminu Waziri Tambuwal or Mallam Nasir el-Rufai or other opposition and displaced leaders with ambitions to contest becoming leaders of the new party.
“Imagine all these people decide that in order to lay a solid foundation for the emergence of a strong party, all of them or majority of them will instead aspire to become part of the leaders of the new party.
“Certainly, if that happens, the new party can guarantee collegiate leadership similar to what we had in second republic political parties, especially the NPN. Failure to have that could simply mean that the new party risked being oriented in old ways with a political culture of imposition becoming dominant,” he noted.
Assessing them further, Lukman argued that “the question of building a functional party that can have the capacity of subordinating them is never part of their consideration. Instead, the same issues about North/South permutations, which Mr. Adio highlighted, are the focus.
“Across the North/South divide, many of the leading politicians, especially those with ambitions, both expressed and implied, use the issue of where the most likely candidate will come from as the primary consideration.
“The worrying reality is that many of these opposition and displaced politicians with ambitions are highly complicit and have little or no evidential credentials of emerging as better political leaders.
“Based on laypersons’ legal knowledge, many of these politicians would be judged to be accessories, whether before or after, to our current political travesty. Given their records of service, they are most likely to be worse than former Presidents Goodluck Jonathan, Muhammadu Buhari and now President Tinubu.
“Based on their records, they exhibit intolerant dispositions and poor relationships on accounts of which they have mismanaged their transitions and are today hardly in control of political structures in their states.
“Some of them, on account of their influential roles in past administrations and the failures of those administrations should be humble enough to take a backseat in effort to build a strong coalition to strengthen Nigerian politics. Instead, it is more like a case of unrepentant show of shame,” he lamented.
Reacting further, the former Director General APC Progressive Governors Forum (PGF) quipped that; “It is quite troubling that politics in Nigeria is being reduced to discussing personalities at the expense of critical political institutions that should regulate the conducts of elected leaders.
“Even when assumed popular leaders such as former President Buhari and President Tinubu shortchanged citizens and the nation, we overlooked the fundamental issues that undermines the capacity of these leaders to meet the expectations of Nigerians, which is about building a veritable and functional political party, whose absence is responsible with why we end up with leaders who are emperors.
“Once that remains the case, it should be clear to all that even when opposition and displaced politicians unite to defeat APC and President Tinubu in 2027, the country may end up with another bad, if not worse, leader.
“Given that in terms of guaranteeing political competition, the situation we are confronting as a nation today is worse than what we had in 2015, we must summon the courage to go beyond the sentiment of just defeating APC and President Tinubu in 2027.
“In many respects, I am in full agreement with Mr. Peter Obi when he addressed the press after the opening session of the conference that he will not support any coalition of opposition to APC if it is just for power grab,” he stated.
