Former national chairman of the ruling All progressives Congress (APC), Comrade Adams Oshiomhole has warned his successor, Dr Abdullahi Umar Ganduje to be wary of the antics of governors whose penchant is to impose their will on the party.
Speaking during the launch of a book titled: “APC and Transition Politics” written by Malam Salihu Lukman at the Yar’Adua centre Abuja, he claimed that his refusal to yield to the dictates of Governors led to his removal from office.
Oshiomhole who was controversially relieved of his job as APC national chairman via an FCT court order by Justice Danlami Senchi in June 2020 traced his ordeal to his resolve to ensure internal democracy in the party.
He claimed governors at the time picked offence with him after he consulted them on the need to have a guideline ahead of the party primaries acceptable to the entire APC stakeholders.
Oshiomhole recalled how the governors at the time accused him of working for his “paymaster in bourdillion”, apparently in a veiled reference to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who was then the national leader of the party.
Oshiomhole who is presently Senator representing Edo North said Ganduje might be lucky to survive the dictatorial tendencies of the governors with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as leader of the party as against his case when he had former President Muhammadu Buhari was indifferent about the situation at the time.
Oshiomhole claimed that the party supported the entire candidates of the party with funds ranging from N10 – N800 million to vie for election in the 2019 poll as party of effort to entrench party supremacy and internal democracy in the party.
He expressed surprise that Lukman who was the Director General of the Progressive Forum ( PGF) failed to deploy his radical disposition to call the governors to order, even after he was removed from office in breach of the party constitution.
He said: “You were the DG PGF when wrote a letter inviting governors for a meeting guidelines conducting primaries know thinking of interest groups. I first discussed with the president so that by the time the guideline is out, the party will take ownership of it.
“The governors said no, I should come to Imo state House and that they will not come to APC office. He (Lukman) was there. I sat there. the governors had already taken their decision. Chairman sir, (referring to Ganduje) if you have not faced it already you will face it.
“The only difference is if the president decides to intervene or moderate, you would be lucky. In my time we had a president who was not ready to intervene. The governors summoned me as the chairman of the party to their own preferred venue, not the one that I told them which is the party office which the party hired.
“And one by one to the hearing of Lukman, they told me they are the “Generals” in the field. And that they know the terrain, I cannot tell them this. And so they were banging the table, you can’t do this. Some even threatened they would leave the party if insist.
” And when they finished for a moment I thought I was at a military barracks. At a point I told them that none of you here can lecture me about the powers of a governor because I had been governor twice for eight years uninterrupted and at a point I told Fayemi you did a resit, you were elected, second term you lost. That means you failed and then you went for a resit but I did not do a resit.
“They harrased me and said whoever they want must emerge and I said you are talking to the wrong person who won’t mortgage his office or the authority of the office and the national working committee (NWC) of the party.”
Oshiomhole thereby called on the leadership of the party not to yield to any form of intimidation by the governors whose reign remain transient.
Recalling his long standing relationship with Lukman as far back as their days in the textile union and as the national President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Oshiomhole described him as a thorough bred democrat who would always bare his views no matter whose ox is gored.
He enjoined Lukman to endeavour to reach out to party leaders on issues that are of concern to him rather than resorting to washing their dirty linens in the public domain.
He noted: “Even though I was the president that everybody knows, Lukman takes a very radical and completely different views from the others. Yet he enjoys doing that. The good thing is that when we have resolved and we say Lukman you are to man Kuje road, Lukman would do that.
“For you to know my feeling for him, I have no business taking him from textile union NLC when I became NLC President. But I like people who are independent minded and fearless to speak their minds. They not necessarily always right.
” But they provoke you to deepen your understanding and interrogate your assumption so that at the end of the day whatever conclusion you reached has benefited from all angles. You are most likely to be better off than to be surrounded by yes men, in fact you know it all persons.”
“The world would never be such that everybody would think like you. And how you think is not necessarily perfect. You see the world from your own window. What I see from my own door can be different. But the good news is with conversation, we can reconcile gaps in information, gaps in suspicious and we can reduce mistrusts.
“I just want to let Lukman know that it’s good to have courage but the courage must enable you to know what you can discuss inhouse and what you can write and publish. Many atimes we have our conversation, but it’s not for the press. If you go to the press are you asking the PDP to come and help us or the other flash in the can party? Keep writing but make a distinction what you can discuss with the chairman of he is available or your zonal official and proffer solutions. That is what I consider constructive criticism.”
At the event chaired by the founding national chairman of the APC, chief Bisi Akande, Lukman justified his position on the affairs of the party saying it was aimed at ensuring good governance in he polity.
He added: “What is required is to give critical support to all our leaders so that they are really able to revive all the structure of the party. Part of the challenge is the future of our children.
“Coming back where we were coming from we clearly have it much more better than what our children are going through today. The whole process of progressive politics is about making lives better.
“When set out not projecting ourselves for accolades . We expected people to be critical and through this engagement the party and the nation would be better.”
