APC, Buhari, Tinubu ruined Nigeria, must be changed – Lukman
By Omeiza Ajayi
ABUJA: A former National Vice Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress APC, Salihu Moh. Lukman at the weekend lamented how his erstwhile party and the duo of former President Muhammadu Buhari and incumbent President Bola Tinubu ruined the nation, saying 2027 presents a golden opportunity to replace them.
Noting that it will not be enough to merely replace the APC, Lukman said Nigerians have to work hard to entrench a system whereby the new political party that will produce the next leaders, has the power to put elected officials in check.
He however expressed dismay that the current crop of leading opposition politicians are working at cross-purposes as they are each focused on their presidential ambitions, rather than subsuming their narrow interests under the broader national interest of rescuing the nation from the vice-grip of current political hawks.
Lukman in a statement issued in Abuja said unknown to key political opposition leaders, the strength or confidence of President Tinubu is derived from their inability to open themselves and honestly commence negotiations to build a united front ahead of 2027.
He said key opposition political leaders like Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, Mr Peter Obi and Sen. Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso have paid their dues and are still actively nursing ambitions to become President, even though they were Presidential candidates in the 2023 election.
“If anything, President Tinubu and APC won that election on account of their failure to unite under one political platform”, he stated.
Lukman said while the opposition leaders all agree that the performance of President Tinubu in the last year since his assumption of office has been disastrous, unfortunately, their agreement falls short of making them accept to work together towards building a common platform, capable of mobilizing and uniting Nigerians towards defeating President Tinubu and APC in 2027.
According to him, their inability to commence proper political negotiations is emboldening President Tinubu to continue with his impulsive visionless governance experiment, unperturbed by the harsh realities it has created for Nigerians.
He said it is quite worrisome that notwithstanding the dangers before the nation, key opposition leaders believe in a business-as-usual approach to politics whereby the most important thing in politics is the management of their ambitions to become President.
Lukman said; “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 organization 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?”
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