New Telegraph

PGF DG: Internal wrangling in APC, bane of governance

The Director-General, Progressive Governors Forum (PGF), Salihu Lukman has situated the alleged bad governance in the present administration to the internal wrangling in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

The DG, however, proposed for a constitutional amendment committee to the Governor Mai-Mala Buni-led Caretaker/Extraordinary National Convention Planning Committee
According to him, beyond proposals for constitutional amendment, there is the urgent need to consider developing proposed code of conduct for elected and appointed officials of the party as byelaws to regulate conduct of party leaders.
Addressing the crisis in APC and how it had affected governance, the PGF DG said: “A major gap created by the current orientation of political parties in Nigeria with perverted political behaviour, which confer prerogative of membership
recruitment to political leaders is the barrier that is making it almost impossible for parties, including the APC, to serve as vehicles for citizens’ participation.
“Once APC continue to operate as a closed party, its progressive credentials will remain only a claim of its leaders and anyone who challenged it will be bullied. APC can only be progressive if it is able to encourage and promote competition within the party as a prelude to electoral contests.
“The absence of competition has reduced, predominantly, the business of the party not to focus on issues of managing governments based on capacity of party members to contribute to initiatives of governments controlled by the party especially with reference to agricultural development, jobs creation, education, health, infrastructural development, poverty eradication and rapid technological development.”
According to him, the code of conduct is necessary in order to prevent situations whereby officials of the party will not abuse their office and conduct themselves in manners that could undermine the party’s commitment to the principles of public accountability or even get stretched to issues bordering on criminal conduct and the probable extension of strategies of political bullying to include the deployment of state law enforcement machinery and officials against fellow citizens and party members.
The PGF boss, who made this suggestion in a statement made available to journalists in Abuja, said the Buni Committee need to be given every support within the party and by extension patriotic Nigerians sympathetic to the APC to be able to put the party on the part of progressive politics.

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