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APC: PGF DG sets agenda for new NWC

As the All Progressives Congress (APC) prepares to hold its National Convention to elect a new National Working Committee (NWC) for the party, the Director General of the Progressive Governors Forum, Salihu Lukman has set an agenda for Working Committee members.
According to him, the incoming NWC should first computerize the membership data of the party and make the National Secretariat functional that it can relate to ward offices easily.
Speaking on the ‘AIT’ programme, JIGSAW where he expounded on his new book; ‘APC Litmus Test’, he said: “I believe as a party, immediately after the Convention, the first thing the new leadership should do is to have a membership data that is computerized. We can’t continue to have a situation where our membership data is not electronically preserved. We must ensure that our membership data is updated electronically without the tedious process of handling it in an analogue way.
“Secondly, we must have a viable national secretariat because membership is everything to a political party, a situation where the administrative framework of the national secretariat is so weak and loosed that it link to what is obtainable at the local government and state levels and creates its own complications. So the first thing the new leadership must do is to reorganize the national secretariat in such a way it has that organic relation between it and all the structures of the party so that at the ward level, even if somebody leaves the party, it will be immediately known by the national leadership, and if somebody joins the party, he should be quietly be registered at the ward without the noise in the media, it should be seamless.”
Further, he spoke on the internal crisis that has rocked the party insisting that it is not a problem experienced only by the APC, adding that as a convergence of people from diverse backgrounds and interests, there are bound to be minor disagreements which do not necessarily mean that the party will implode.
He noted that even before and even immediately after the meager that brought about the APC, many analysts had thought that the party was going to disintegrate, assuring that whatever seems to be the situation today will still be handled by the party.
“It is important to return to the basic framework that every party is an organisation that has various interests. It is difficult to have a political party where people do not have diverse interests. But the most important thing is to have and build a party where the aggregation of the various interests will be able to win the mandate.
“The major issue is that even before the meager, there is the notion that parties do not have the power to win the confidence of the people as it were. I also do not think that while negotiating for the meager, nobody believed it was going to be a party that can appeal to everybody. Even some people in the meager had sympathy for the PDP then.
“One basic issue is the need to have strong point about the need to institute reconciliation within the party. The major issue we have insisted is that you can’t have a political party without a credible membership register. Good enough the Caretaker Committee bought that idea and we have done it and that is the basic of the new book I have written. It is a contribution to help in an advisory capacity to support the leadership to know what needs to be done to make the party appeal to the Nigerian people.”
He made reference to the former NWC, as he said the party must be run democratically where all the organs have the opportunity to discharge their functions unlike what obtained in the last National Working Committee (NWC) that did not function in tandem with the books of the party.

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