A former member of the All Progressives Congress National Working Committee (NWC), Salihu Lukman, has cautioned the Abdullahi Umar Ganduje-led national leadership against the adoption of the direct mode of primary to produce a candidate for the party ahead of the September date for the Edo State governorship election.
Lukman gave the words of caution in a statement, “Challenges of Democratising Political Parties,” issued at the weekend in Abuja.
Tribune Online checks revealed that the party primary to produce its standard-bearer for the Edo state governorship elections has been fixed for February 3.
Further checks by Tribune Online revealed that under the APC Constitution, its candidates for any general elections could emerge through direct, indirect primary or consensus.
Lukman however noted that the APC has no valid membership register and the adoption of direct primary in Edo state could be open to abuse by certain individuals, determined to foist their favoured choice as candidate.
“Issues of maintaining verifiable membership register is a condition precedent for the conduct of direct primary by any political party. “Experiences under APC is that direct primary is being conducted without verifiable membership register, which empowers party leaders to simply write results in favour of aspirants they want to emerge as candidates for elections. “Once that is the case, winning elections will hardly be about winning the votes of electorates. The same logic that is applied to produce candidates, which is manipulating results of the primary will be used during the elections. Campaigns will be weakly committed to winning the support of the electorates.”
He also maintained that the Ganduje-led National Working Committee could not solely adopt direct primary without recourse to another statutory organ of the party, the National Executive Committee for the latter organ to approve it.
“The recent decision by the APC National Working Committee (NWC) regarding the 2024 Edo election, whereby the NWC announced that the party’s candidate will emerge through direct primary may be informed by the strong desire of party leaders to manipulate the process.
“Already, there are media reports alleging that APC Stakeholders in Edo State have decided to limit the number of aspirants for the primary.
“These are troublesome realities. Troublesome because the decision of the NWC to organise direct primary contradicts provisions of Article 13.4(iv) of the APC constitution, which only empowers the NWC to ‘propose electoral guidelines and regulations governing the conduct of elections to Party offices at all levels, and procedure for selecting Party candidates for elective offices …to the National Executive Committee.’ The decision of the NWC to produce the Governorship candidate of APC for the Edo 2024 election based on a direct primary is a clear usurpation of the powers of the National Executive Committee (NEC), which is illegal.
“Combinations of illegality, clear disposition by APC leaders to manipulate the process of producing candidates could only mean that APC leaders are weakly committed to winning the support of electorates. Once that is the case, it makes APC leaders more disposed to acts of rigging and manipulating electoral results with the attendant consequences of producing elected representatives on the platform of the party who are anything but representative or responsive to the interest of citizens. As loyal APC members, we will continue to appeal to our leaders to moderate their conduct and return to the founding vision of APC.”