LIVE UPDATES
Former National Vice Chairman (North West) of the All Progressive Congress, APC, Salihu Lukman on Monday faulted the performance of the All Progressive Congress on key issues like says security, economic stability and anti-corruption.
Recalled that Lukman resigned from the party, citing, failure to meet it's campaign promises.
He made this statement during an interview aired with ARISE NEWS on Monday.
He however called on President Bola Tinubu to uphold a leadership practices in favour of the people.
According to him, “I admit that in terms of meeting up with our campaign promises, we have done badly, no doubt about it. Issues like security, economy, fighting corruption. We have done badly and people are free to reach the conclusion whether APC is worse than PDP or not.
"But as at 2023, before the election, I had the hope that because our leaders were not in denial of the challenges facing us, they would be humble enough to admit that we have not done what we needed to do between 2015 and 2023 and that’s what I was practically very very confident that he will not really do business as usual the way president Buhari did.
“Unfortunately, here we are. He’s doing business as usual and as it is, we are going to end up in a worse situation. So to that extent, you might be right in criticising some of us who were in APC and who supported president Asiwaju.”
The former national vice chairman of the APC noted that one of the most contentious decisions made by President Asiwaju was the immediate declaration of the end of the petroleum subsidy on his inauguration day, a move he critisised for its lack of planning and preparation, which has affected the living conditions in the country.
Furthermore, there appears to be no coherent plan to address the subsequent challenges, leading to the conclusion that the government is not taking substantive action.
“One of the biggest mistakes that President Asiwaju made was making that declaration on his inauguration day, declaring petroleum subsidy is gone without even sitting down to put up a plan and today, no plan to respond to that challenge. And that is why the living condition in the country is crashing and the government is just ground standing. All of us in the party have become onlookers. We are not able to even access president Asiwaju and influence decisions in terms of what needs to be done.
“From the way things are going, my prediction, which is why I had to act the way I acted is that by the end of this year, if we don’t take time, the campaign for 2027 will start and people will be forced to just queue behind any leader and out of anger, out of frustration, with the reality before us, we’ll end up even electing a worse successor to President Asiwaju and all the challenges of the country will even get worse.”
“APC was founded on the vision of being a social democratic party. A social democratic party prioritises the wellbeing and condition of living of the citizens. So, issues of education, issues of health, issues of social welfare should have been the priority and that should be reflected in public investment driven by government."
