Salihu Lukman, a former National Vice Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) North-West, believes the ruling party should establish a code of acceptable conduct for party officials and elected representatives.
“None of the Second Republic parties will allow what is going on in the case of Yahaya Bello for instance,” Lukman said on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Wednesday.
“This is why I keep raising the point about the APC coming up with a kind of code of conduct for elected representatives and leaders of the party because leadership is about trust.”
Lukman, a former Director General of Progressives Governors Forum (PGF) of the ruling APC also said the party has been reduced to an election platform that has produced some “disasters” as elected representatives because the party organs have failed to meet to discuss critical matters.
“The national caucus was meeting almost every week before the 2015 election,” he said lamenting that eight months into the administration of ex-Kano governor Abdullahi Ganduje as APC national chairman, the National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting of the APC has not taken place.
“Because we are faced with this reality, it presents an opportunity for the leaders of the party to really go back and renegotiate the party because when you have a political party that doesn’t meets, it’s as good as not having a party; we are reduced to another election platform. The danger is that even in managing an election platform, we have produced almost a disaster,” Lukman said.
Political Solution’ll End Ganduje’s Ordeal
He said the mismanagement of political relations has been the reason incumbent governors have been rubbishing their predecessors, despite the fact that they belong to the same political party at one point or the other.
Lukman said the corruption allegations facing Ganduje in Kano has political undertones, arguing that only a political solution would solve it. He said the troubles facing Ganduje in Kano has to do with his squabble with Rabiu Kwankwaso, another ex-governor and 2023 presidential candidate of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP).
Lukman said the protracted conflict between Ganduje and Kwankwaso “was an avoidable crisis which emerged because the party didn’t handle it well” which made Kwankwaso dumped the ruling party.
“We must push Dr Abdullahi Ganduje to renegotiate relationships back in his state because it’s political. If you don’t approach it politically, you will never take it away. You can replace Dr Abdullahi Ganduje and if the capacity to get leaders to do the right thing in their base is not addressed, we will continue to get into this,” he said.
Ganduje and some of his family members are being probed by the state anti-graft agency under the control of Governor Abba Yusuf of the NNPP over corruption charges and the matter is in court. Some APC ward chieftains have suspended Ganduje but the matter has been roped in conflicting court judgements, with the APC disowning those chieftains and affirming the ex-Kano governor as the party’s national chairman.
Like Ganduje, who has a case to answer in court, Bello, also an APC chieftain, has a case before the court.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is prosecuting Bello, the immediate-past Governor of Kogi State on 19 counts bordering on alleged money laundering, breach of trust, and misappropriation of funds to the tune of N80.2 billion.
EFCC chief Ola Olukoyede, who vowed to prosecute Bello or resign, alleged that the embattled ex-governor withdrew $720,000 from the state’s accounts to pay his child’s school fees in advance just before he left office on January 27, 2024.
The anti-graft commission has since declared Bello wanted after his successor, Governor Usman Ododo allegedly whisked him away on April 17, 2024, preventing EFCC operatives to arrest him (Bello) when they laid siege to his Abuja residence.