Salihu Lukman, a former National Vice Chairman (North West) of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) says the party leadership has finished spending the over N30 billion naira it realised from sale of forms for the 2023 general elections.
The party sold the presidential nomination form for N100 million; the governorship form was sold for N50 million; Senate, N20 million; House of Representatives, N10 million; and House of Assembly, N2 million.
Speaking in an interview with Tribune, Lukman, a former Director-General of the Progressives Governors Forum said the party leadership under Abdullahi Ganduje is currently running from pillar to post, looking for money to run the party affairs and “behaving like contractors to access funding in government”.
“When I was trying to launch my book, I had the privilege of meeting the National Chairman, Dr Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, whom I was opposed to, but whom I respected. At a personal level, I can even say I have a good relationship with him, but my good relationship with him does not becloud my understanding of what should be right”.
“When I met him, I made it very clear to him: ‘Now you are national chairman. And my understanding is that you will be left almost like an orphan. The critical issue facing the party, because for the party to even ensure its organs are meeting, the party must have sources of funding. Those have not been defined’. And I volunteered. I said, ‘Well, I will give you a proposal on how to address the funding of the party’. And I did. I shared it. Up to today, I have not received any feedback”.
“But what I can predict is that the party has finished spending all the money it mobilised from sales of forms for the last election. And now they are running from pillar to post, behaving like contractors to access funding in government. Coming from a non-governmental sector, I have spent most of my adult life or my career life in trade unions. And trade unions are funded by members”.
“So, I know what it means to mobilise funding by members, and I think that is the big gap in politics today. None of our parties is organised that way. That is the critical challenge which, if this democracy is to really grow, we have to address”.
