Why Northern Muslim shouldn’t aspire for Senate Presidency –Lukman, APC national vice Chair

National Vice Chairman of the All Progressive Congress (APC), North-West, Mallam Salihu Lukman, gives reasons why a northern Muslim senator should not be allowed to aspire to the Senate presidency. In this interview with Channel TV Politics Today monitored by Linus Aleke, he also talked about the party’s internal intrigues, among other issues

There seems to be fire on the mountain in APC, for a man of your calibre to write an open letter to the National Chairman, what are the issues?

I don’t know if there is fire on the mountain but the concerns are simple. There are constitutional provisions, which set up structures and organ of the party and gives directives in terms of the schedule of meetings for those organs. It is expected that when those organs meet, any issue within the party can be tackled. Once you block those organs from a meeting, then you reduce decisions within the party to the discretion of individuals and that is the problem. Once we don’t allow the structures to function, we would continue to face different kinds of problems and there will be contestation in terms of the legality of the decisions taken. Because, once decisions are taken, they will favour some and not favour others and if it is an individual that takes that decision, then the people who feel un-favoured can continue to fight. But once it is an organ of the party that meets, it then means that every view within the party is considered and the decision is taken and therefore, it will be binding on everybody, now, that is the issue.

Since you wrote this open letter has there been any response from the National Chairman?

I can say straight away that I had not received any correspondence from him, and I am hoping I will get a response from him. I am, however, very confident like in the past, that we will go through all these hurdles, and at the end of it all, we would sort ourselves out. We are not contesting these issues to bring the party down, far from it. This is one party that I think had received a lot of blessing from party leaders and members and had received a lot of blessings from Nigerians and the inability to respect those blessings and acknowledge that Nigerians expect that we represent the future of democracy in this country. We cannot continue to take that for granted. Democracy is about the rule of law, the first law within a political party is the constitution of the party. I tell you and I will keep arguing this, as Nigerians, if we want to build this democracy, we must invest time and resources and whatever we have in the development of the party. Because, once we can develop the party, we would reduce democracy to periodic elections and a periodic election will produce representatives. But if the party cannot regulate the conduct of people who are elected, then Nigeria will continue to have problems. I think that the best way we can regulate the conduct of elected representatives is to allow organs of the party to meet and take decisions. Once, these decisions are taken, they are binding on every member of the party, including elected representatives, no matter how highly placed they are.

Is this a poor leadership style or there are other challenges that people are not aware of?

I will put it this way, we are all part of the problem. Because, for instance, when the constitution stipulates that the National Executive Council should meet every quarter, and three months passed without any meeting, and nobody is asking questions. And specifically, there are statutory issues, the National Executive Council is directed by the constitution to decide. Some of those things include for instance, there should be a national budget, there should be a quarterly report of activities, and there should be a quarterly report of finances, covering income and expenditure. A number of these issues are supposed to be decided and approved by NEC. Now, when NEC does not take place, somebody takes decisions on a number of these issues and we all become one way or the other either beneficiary or whichever way you like to describe it, to those decisions and we feel comfortable about it. Yet, the instructions of the party continue to get weak. Let me give you a practical example, one of the statutory requirements that the NEC directs the NWC to facilities by way of presenting the proposal to the NEC is that we should present proposed guidelines for the conduct of elections at all levels. Now, the two Chambers of the National Assembly are going to be inaugurated in June, and already there is a leadership contest. We are not taking any steps as NWC to prepare proposed guidelines for the conduct of those elections within our party. And we are not preparing to convey an NEC meeting to approve, yet we know as Nigerians, that there are certain issues we cannot take for granted, as Nigerians we know that the question of representation is very key, in a party and I had highlighted this before. We went into the contest of the 2023 elections with a Muslim joint ticket and that was purely an electoral strategy. Now, if that is the case, we have produced two highest-ranking officers in government as Muslim/ Muslim and we know that some have opportunistically used that to create ethnic and religious tension in this country. We cannot take that for granted, and therefore to leave the place vacant and allow people including Muslims to now aspire for instance for Senate President which is the number three person, means that as a party we are setting the stage to produce all the three highest-ranking officers as Muslims. We know that no matter how highly placed an individual is, he cannot change the constitution of the country. But there are sentiments to some of these things.

Could you say that those who described Abdullahi Adamu as a weak leader are right or wrong?

It is not within my calling to start passing judgement. My position now is to place a demand and I believe that when the statutory organ of the party is convened, a number of these issues would be tabled and trashed. Meanwhile, the capacity of Senator Abdullahi Adamu to manage this meeting cannot be contested. Look, what I have argued, which I reflected in my open letter is that Abdullahi Adamu came highly recommended, there is no doubt about his experience and pedigree. He has what it takes to run the affairs of the party and I can tell you, when we started, he gave us the confidence that we are moving in the right direction. For instance, it was his initiative to set up a transition committee and they gave us a very good report, but thereafter, the problem is implementing the report of the transition committee, which requires pronouncement by the meeting of the organs of the party. And like I said, in that open letter, maybe perhaps because we came at the time when we need to produce candidates for elections, we were all overwhelmed. Now, that we have passed that stage, I think we need to come back to base. Now, the issue, and this is what gave me the restless kind of fear, if we allow all these problems to manifest, in such a way that it produces a leadership or the Tinubu government is starting on a controversial footing, then we are not going to be fair to that government. And I think that it is the responsibility of the party to ensure that the government starts on a healthy ground. And that is why I said, look, it will appear if we fail to convene this meeting, we are abdicating our responsibility as a party. Mark my words, I keep saying, that because I am part of the leadership, I am not singling Abdullahi Adamu, I believe that being part of that leadership, I have the legitimacy to raise my voice and argue the way I am arguing with the hope that it would draw the attention of both Senator Abdullahi Adamu and every leader of the party to agree to do the right thing.

Some people say that if this internal crisis in APC continues, Bola Tinubu’s administration may be distracted from the real issues, do you share this opinion?

I do, but let me not commit myself too much. But first, let me say that the party is the product of the inspirational relationship between Bola Tinubu and President Muhammadu Buhari. Their partnership and political friendship were what produced the success story of the merger negotiation of 2012/2013 of the opposition parties. And it is that partnership that helped us to galvanise the support across the country to be able to defeat a ruling party in 2015. The party at this point is supposed to ensure that that strong relationship continues, especially in this period of transition, and that it is used to set the stage for the incoming government and that moving forward we must not allow a situation whereby any decision taken by Tinubu will be seen as different from any decisions for instance president Buhari may have taken now. I think the responsibility of the party as the political cover for the government is the one that will determine whether the government of Tinubu will benefit from the historic relationship that existed between him and President Buhari. I think it is our responsibility to convene those organ meetings because those organs will at the minimum bring the two of them together and while they are there, they have to consult and guide us to take the right decision just like they did during the period of the merger. This is the minimum the party can do.

What do you think can be done to put the party back on the right track?

Well, I had said it and I want to repeat myself, I think at the minimum, between now and May 29, we must call a NEC meeting. Like I said, I am ready to go to any length to compel us as party leaders to comply with the provisions of our constitution, I think this is the minimum we can do to save our party and leaders. Because our leaders may feel they are comfortable doing what they are doing but they are setting the stage for their self-destruction. And I think that this needs to be stopped and we need to move forward with confidence. Look, a meeting is the first preparatory ground to discover prospective leaders. If you freeze these structures and you block them from holding meetings, you are blocking the capacity and that is why you see that we have reduced democracy to only one thing, which is periodic elections. Periodic elections will happen once every four years, after the four years, what happens? Because we are not holding meetings, we are not holding ourselves accountable, many of our elected representatives have never sighted a copy of our manifesto and it is only through meetings that we can get them to understand the mandate, upon which the party went around to campaign. For instance, Tinubu has done something very good, he came up with his programme. For the next four years, his government is supposed to run based on that programme, people are going to be appointed and if care is not taken, if the party is not active, we would have people at the highest level as ministers who don’t even know the commitment of Tinubu to the Nigerian people. They will just be doing their things and as a party, we need to wake up to those responsibilities and I think that is the way to go. Go and read the profile of our National Chairman, he has been on the political landscape at the national level, since the second republic. So, this should not be anything new and I don’t think he should have problems relating to the demands, some of us are making. However, it turns out, I think we should be able to go to every length to ensure that at the minimum before May 29, we shall have a NEC meeting where a number of these issues would be addressed.

What is holding the constitution of your National Advisory Council?

I think that falls within the purview of the National Secretary because if you read our constitution, it directed the national secretary to convene a meeting of the National Administrative Council within one month after the election. So, we were elected on March 28, and by April 28, 2022, the first meeting of the National Administrative Council should have taken place. I don’t know if the national secretary understood that that is part of his responsibility. There had not been any meeting of the National Working Committee where he presented a proposal for convening the meeting of the National Administrative Council.

Is the party now running on autopilot?

That is the thing, and I am sure that if you go and audit all the other parties including PDP, you are going to even see a worse scenario than what is currently obtained in APC.

Is your party aware of the fact that a political party is supposed to be run by a trained administrator and not just politicians?

There is what I call the PDP virus that is dominant everywhere in our polity. The PDP virus postulates that the main thing about democracy is periodic elections and for you to win the election, you just need money, and the starting point is that you must control the structures of the party. So, everybody wants to ensure that if they want to be governors, they must have all the structure in their respective states at their palms. The first thing is to just get people who will answer yes to them. I think that to correct that we need to begin to draw attention to the fact that we can contest and become a governor without controlling the structure of the party. Buhari is a clear example, he never controlled any structure of the party but he has such moral standing that where ever he is he is respected. I think that is what politicians should be working to achieve rather than controlling structures.