A Chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Salihu Lukman said
one of the big gaps confronting the party making it easy for opposition politicians to dent APC and its governments’ is the absence of mobilisation programme to engage Nigerians to take responsibility in responding to challenges facing the country.
Lukman said getting Nigerians to take responsibility in their different fields of endevours in responding to challenges facing the country is a critical success factor in terms of producing the change envisioned by the APC and its leadership as articulated in the party’s manifesto.
The Director-General, Progressive Governors Forum (PGF) in a statement released in Abuja on Tuesday said unlike the the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), APC leaders are not in denial of the challenges the nation was passing through.
He however cautioned that,”being members of the APC, we should be able to acknowledge too that although, the slogan of the APC is CHANGE, which underlines the commitment of the party and its leadership to bring about change in the country, the programmatic details as articulated in the party’s manifesto require a mobilisation programme in order to win the support of Nigerians.
“To be different, APC members should be able to appeal to the party’s leaders to urgently develop a a strong mobilisation campaign that can connect citizens with all the initiatives of government. As part of such mobilisation campaign, raising public awareness about the initiatives’ government is taking should be a priority. The second thing is also to be able to provide feedback to government about the effectiveness of initiatives taken by APC governments’ so far.
“As members of APC, we need to take responsibility and acknowledge that challenges facing the country require a strong mobilisation campaign as a fundamental requirement for bringing about change in the country. This is, at the moment, almost taken for granted.
“In fact, most of the distortions going on today in Nigerian public spaces, which attempts to dismiss the APC and its governments as a failure is largely because of weak or absence of strong mobilisation programme. Being able to acknowledge this reality should be supported with good recommendation on how best to develop strong mobilisation programme to rally the support of Nigerians to address challenges facing the country”.
Lukman acknowledged that the challenges facing Nigeria as a nation are deep rooted and it will require a robust programme of reorientation in the country to sustain the envisioned change APC and its leadership are working to achieve.
He said absence of engagements with religious and ethnic groups is more and more creating factors in the country, which are disorientating and undermining the authority of conventional structures and representatives of Nigerian society, including non-governmental institutions.
The PGF Boss lamentated that in place of these, unaccountable and self-appointed leaders are emerging and culture of public blackmails against conventional structures and representatives is becoming rampant in the country.
“One of the major challenges facing Nigeria today is that ‘self-styled saviours’ projecting themselves as leaders campaigning to win ‘a sense of belonging’ based on aggressive ‘nationalism, uncompromising religious sects, or violent urban tribes’ are springing up in every part of the country.
“This is partly the issue around the Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho phenomena in the South-East and South-West. Unfortunately, because such phenomena are allowed without any counter mobilisational strategy, they are increasingly becoming threats to political leaders. To some extent, they are also becoming models of responses to Nigeria’s challenges by ethnic and religious groups, which is dangerous”, he added.
