Salihu Lukman, a former national vice chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has stated that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the ruling party are the same.
Speaking on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics, which Obasanjonews.com was able to watch, Lukman claimed that the APC was now getting worse than the PDP it was meant to replace.
He emphasised that the APC was created because the PDP was turning into a one-man show where internal democracy had been abandoned and candidates were forced upon the voters.
The APC leader claimed that in order to beat the PDP and address some of the irregularities identified at the time, the opposition parties decided to combine.
We had no doubts about the type of party the APC ought to be. Beyond the imposition of candidates, one of the PDP’s problems that we observed was that elected officials had no accountability to the party or to anybody else. Based on this, we believed that the APC would be built differently, which is where the phrase “change” originated.
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“The party has strayed from the conception that it was going to be social democratic with a priority on the issues of health, education, and social services during the debate about the party’s manifesto,” Lukman added.
Because Muhammadu Buhari was the party’s only source of electoral advantage, Lukman argued that part of the party’s issues stemmed from his administration and that the President was treated like an emperor.
He bemoaned that things had really become worse, saying, “We were hoping with Asiwaju (President Bola Ahmed Tinubu), things will start changing.”
Some of its organs have not met since the organisation of the party that we are hosting. The APC leader bemoaned, “We are having a party in which no meetings have taken place for a year and that party is controlling the government.”
