The leading All Progressives Congress (APC) national chairmanship aspirant, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, has said the ruling party is not formed to meet during election period alone but also to discuss policies that affect people and share ideas from time to time.
Oshiomhole, who said this on Wednesday in Abuja at an interactive session with the youth, expressed his plan to refocus the party such that ethnic and religious sentiments would no longer dominate the national discourse.
He lamented the absence of a serious platform within the ruling party where its agenda was thoroughly discussed.
He said President Muhammadu Buhari’s signing of Not-Too-Young-To-Bill would make only sense when those manning various spheres of our national life were people with contemporary global knowledge and ideas.
He said, "We want refocus the party. Whether young or old, there should be dos and don’ts. I’m talking about the need for policy direction. My hope is that if I become national chairman, people should conduct governance in a way that reflects our values.
" We are still the favoured party. But we must not take the support of people for granted. We have energetic young people within APC. The challenge is how to open up political space. We must begin to talk about relevant experience.
"I believe we need to inject quality young blood in our party structure, organization, and government. But we must work for our party to retain power and use the power to deliver prosperity to our people."
Oshiomhole added, "Without looking for trouble, the immediate past president cannot be described as an old man by any definition. Do you think that was the ambassador of the youths? But by every definition, he is a young man and is very well educated. I just want you to understand the issue, but I want you to refocus and understand the concept of a progressive party. Whether you are old or young, there are the do’s and don’ts geared towards a particular policy direction. It is either we know the difference between the All Progressives Congress and the Peoples Democratic Party.
"We emphasise the people. I need you to understand that the first persons to be elected the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria on the platform is a man who everybody knows that his constituency is the rank of the poor and the under privileged. If he has opponent, that person is from the rank of the establishment anywhere in the country. So you need to know that the essence of progressive politics is people driven, mass based, mass oriented and people oriented party where decisions are bottom up rather than top down. Though people are not just meant to be beneficiaries of development! They are also the means and agents of driving development agenda.
"The current confusion where we appear to be the opposition to ourselves is not acceptable. We have majority in the National Assembly and control 24 out of 36 states and yet, when you read the papers, it appears that the opposition is so hopelessly weak that the APC becomes an opposition to himself. This is because people are doing their own stuff without a common understanding of the basis of our mutual contract, the contract between members of the APC as contained in two important documents which are the constitution and manifesto of the party. Given the privilege, we will subject everyone to the dictates of our constitution and remain faithful to the manifesto of the party on the basis of which we were elected by the Nigerian people.
" I believe that everything considered, we are still the favoured party, but we must not take the support of the people for granted. My task is to be able to assist government at all levels to work in a way that reflect the core values of the APC that over time, we will be able to say people of this category appear to be the natural constituency of the APC. A rich man may decide not to support because the party is not …but for the youth,there are reactionary young people, some of whom are available as mercenaries for all kind of political and other social issues. We also have committed and energetic young people within the APC."