The National Vice Chairman (North West) of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Salihu Mohammed Lukman has said the administration of former President Muhammad Buhari did not take new initiatives to respond to emerging challenges.
He also said the ruling party had difficulties in fulfilling its campaign promises to Nigerians because it failed to manage its electoral victory very well.
Lukman in a statement on Wednesday in Abuja, said one of the failures of the APC administration since winning presidency in 2015 was allowing many officials appointed by the government under Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to remain in the service of the federal government.
Lukman, a member of the APC National Working Commitee (NWC) said, “If the truth must be said, as a party, we didn’t manage electoral victory very well. Since 2015, after winning the presidential elections, we allowed many PDP appointees to remain in the service of the federal government, including Mr. Godwin Emefiele who was inherited as CBN governor.
“This has produced some gaps in terms of policy implementation aimed at achieving campaign promises. There is also the case of allowing appointees to remain in office even when they failed to meet expectations.
“This created unhealthy situations whereby many APC supporters felt neglected and therefore demoralised. In addition, there is the inability of APC governments, especially at the federal level to take new initiatives as responsive measures to respond to emerging challenges.
“A good example is the issue of handling security challenges of banditry in the North-West and North-Central. Although, in terms of investment in hardware, arms procurement and personnel recruitment, relative to past governments, APC under former President Buhari has made significant investment, inability to boldly rolled out new initiatives weakened impact of the investment.
“All these are issues that provided political oxygen to the opposition against APC during the 2023 elections. Couple with the domineering influence of leaders within the APC who are outright conservative or at the least unprogressive, internal dynamics were created to either seek to undermine the development of capacity to both manage the party and enhance its progressive credential to facilitate internal contestation and manage governance.
“Most times, when internal contestations within the party achieve some progressive leap, the conservative bloc within the party try to push the party back. This was exactly the case when President Tinubu was able to mobilise for the defeat against the so-called consensus presidential candidate championed by the conservative bloc.”
