USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Succession and 2023 APC Presidential Candidate

​Thank you, Salihu Moh. Lukman for your open letter to President Muhammadu Buhari on his request to select his APC successor as President of Nigeria in 2023. Since I don't want to be diplomatic, I truly believe that although President Buhari looks very honest personally, his political actions since 2015 have not been honest. He allowed the New-PDP to seize the National Assembly in 2015 and later side-lined major political partners that collaborated with him to form APC that later ensured his election as President of Nigeria. As his eight years presidential tenure is approaching its end, the APC administration is in the hands of former PDP politicians that crossed over. Therefore, Buhari's APC mantra of change in 2015 has become the retention and implementation of PDP ideology in 2022.

The President of Nigeria must come from somewhere in Nigeria and his/her religion and ethnic origin are not parts of his required qualifications to perform the duty of transforming Nigeria to a welfare state economically and industrially. That a public official in Nigeria, including the President, is incompetent and performing badly has nothing to do with his/her ethnic origin and religious affiliation. President Buhari was elected to serve all Nigerians through his appointed Ministers. Although he is from Northern Nigeria, his failure in office must not and cannot be blamed on all Northerners. Therefore, it will be fraudulent to claim that Buhari has been ruling Nigeria on behalf of the North since 2015 when in reality all Nigerians are victims of poor governance irrespective of religious faith and ethnicity. No number of ethnic incantations or religious chants, as Nigerians have experienced, and to cite some examples, would conjure forth functional crude oil refineries or would generate and distribute electricity. We should all understand that Nigeria's problem is not from which ethnic group in Nigeria the President belongs but the ability of the president to govern efficiently to the benefit of all citizens.

The demand of President Muhammadu Buhari that APC governors should allow him to pick APC presidential candidate for the 2023 presidential election is absolutely dishonest and undemocratic. When Buhari became APC presidential flag bearer in 2015, he contested the primary against not less than five other candidates. And in 2019, being the incumbent President, there was consensus within the Party that he should be the flag bearer in that election without the need to go through primary contest. Thinking along ethnic line, Buhari and some people around him had decided that the Presidential candidate of the APC should come from the North in spite of the conventional agreement within the party that presidential power should rotate between the North and the South every eight years. Buhari and his cohorts want to renege on that gentleman's agreement but they are not honest to come out openly. Following the deadline given by INEC, the PDP and APC, like many other political parties in Nigeria, had fixed their primaries to be at the end of May 2022. After the PDP had fixed the date of its presidential primary INEC suddenly announced six days extension of its original deadline for presidential party primaries thus allowing APC to shift its presidential primary to June 6. It must be suspected that the extension of date of the presidential primary by INEC had secretly been requested for by President Buhari. And INEC, which is supposed to be a neutral umpire, granted the request. Politics is not dirty but dirty people playing politics can bring dirt into politics. With the PDP presidential primary concluded and the result showing a Northerner to be its presidential flag bearer, Buhari now wants to singularly pick a Northerner as APC presidential flag bearer under the pretext that only a northern APC candidate can defeat Atiku Abubakar, the PDP presidential candidate.

The presidential candidate of the APC in the 2023 presidential election can be any of the twenty-five aspirants who have paid to contest in the APC presidential primaries and President Muhammadu Buhari as one of the delegates has only one vote. He should exercise his right to vote for the presidential candidate of his own choice but he cannot compel others to vote for his preferred candidate. This is because President Muhammadu Buhari cannot guarantee that his chosen successor will be a good President for Nigeria, if he wins. SINCE 2015, PRESIDENT BUHARI HAS, WITH THE AID OF A SMALL CLIQUE GOVERNED NIGERIA. HE SINGULARLY CHOSE HIS MINISTER OF FINANCE AND GOVERNOR OF CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA. SEVEN YEARS IN OFFICE, THE EXCHANGE RATE OF NIGERIAN NAIRA TO ONE U.S. DOLLAR DEPRECIATED FROM 198 NAIRA TO A DOLLAR TO, NOW, 590 NAIRA TO A DOLLAR. PRESIDENT BUHARI IS THE SUBSTANTIVE MINISTER OF PETROLEUM RESOURCES AND HE HAS SINGULARLY APPOINTED DIRECTORS OF THE NNPC AND NIGERIA'S CRUDE OIL REFINERIES, BUT WHILE HIS GOVERNMENT EXPORTS CRUDE OIL AT $100/BARREL, IT IMPORTS REFINED CRUDE OIL AT $130/BARREL. PRESIDENT BUHARI SINGULARLY CHOSE HIS MINISTER OF POWER BUT AS THE TCN GENERATES AND DISTRIBUTES DARKNESS FOR NIGERIANS, THE NATION BECOMES SOLE IMPORTER OF UNIT GENERATORS. PRESIDENT BUHARI HAS SINGULARLY CHOSEN HIS SECURITY AND SERVICE CHIEFS, ALL WHO ARE NOW DOLLAR MILLIONAIRES. BUT WHILE THE SECURITY AND SERVICE CHIEFS ARE INCAPABLE OF FINDING THE WHERE-ABOUTS OF KIDNAPPERS AND BANDITS MENACING CITIZENS, ALHAJI SHEIK AHMAD GUMI AND MALLAM TUKUR MAMU ARE BUSY WALKING IN AND OUT OF THE FOREST WHERE THEY PARLEY WITH BANDITS AND KIDNAPPERS DAILY. The list can be made longer but it will suffice to say that in every sphere of governance, the choice of executor of government programmes by President Buhari has been fatal failures. In his seven years in office, President Buhari chose small men with little brains to run his government and Nigerians have seen the results to understand that with small men and little brains not much can be achieved. Therefore, President Muhammadu Buhari cannot and must not be allowed to pick his successor in the impending primary election of APC presidential candidate.

S. Kadiri  

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Salihu Lukman <smlukman@gmail.com>
Sent: 01 June 2022 03:36
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Succession and 2023 APC Presidential Candidate

 

Succession and 2023 APC Presidential Candidate

Open Letter to President Muhammadu Buhari

 

Salihu Moh. Lukman

All Progressives Congress

40 Blantyre Crescent

Wuse 2, Abuja

 

During the consultative meeting with Progressive Governors, on Tuesday, May 31, 2022, Your Excellency unambiguously conveyed the resolve to provide every needed leadership for our great party, APC, to remain strong and united to improve our electoral fortunes. Highlighting some of the internal policies, which allowed 'first term Governors who have served credibly well …to stand for re-election' and 'second term Governors …accorded the privilege of promoting successors that are capable of driving their visions', Your Excellency solicited for 'reciprocity and support of Governors and other stakeholders in picking' your successor, 'who would fly the flag of our party for election into the office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in 2023.'

 

This simply means that you want to exercise the same privilege, which is being exercised by Governors in determining who succeeds you as the standard bearer of our party, APC, for the 2023 Presidential election. Ordinarily, this should not be a problem. Both party members and leaders will always trust Your Excellency's judgement. However, the big worry is whether loyal party leaders and members should just reduce themselves to being ordinary observers when very sensitive issues with very high potential to diminish and damage Your Excellency's revered status in the country is being considered. Noting that the current phenomena of poor relations between predecessors and successor governors are largely a product of poorly instituted political succession arrangement in the country, which is impulsive and imposing, it will be highly risky to adopt the same succession framework as it can erode all your lifelong achievements as someone who contribute a lot to strengthen Nigerian democracy.

 

Perhaps, it is important to emphasise that your contribution towards strengthening Nigerian democracy should not be reduced to your emergence as the elected President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in 2015. Your most important contribution has to do with the leadership role you played in facilitating the merger negotiations of opposition parties, which produced the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2013 and eventually also providing the highly inspirationally measured leadership, which defeated the Peoples' Democratic Party (PDP) in 2015. As President of the Federal Republic and leader of APC, you have continued to provide that measured leadership, which has been largely responsible for our electoral victories since 2015. More than anytime, at this point, when you will not be on the ballot in 2023, your measured leadership will be much more required to guarantee us sustained electoral victory.

 

Recalling the unfortunate third term agenda of former President Olusegun Obasanjo and how that eventually eroded all his achievements as a leader, it is necessary to caution against any transition initiative that risked being unpopular. Any initiative that potentially took away the rights of party members to elect candidates would potentially mobilise Nigerians against the party and rubbish Mr. President. This was the case in 2007, which eventually pushed the PDP into wholescale rigging mode such that elections results were announced even before counting processes were concluded. It was so bad that even late President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua who was the main beneficiary had to acknowledge that it was a bad case.

 

Noting that today the PDP is more desperate now to return to power, our party must do everything possible to take the upper moral standing. Already, the PDP has oriented its 2023 campaigns based on lies and deceits. For instance, although it is very convenient for them to complain about the sharp divisions that exists in the country today and heap the blame on APC, by the way they went about nominating their Presidential candidate, they took Nigerians for granted and ignore every reality facing the country. Outside weeping every sentiment against the APC, they completely fail to outline any proposal in terms of how they want to unite Nigerians.

 

As a party, APC must be able to demonstrate much more sensitivity to the challenges of national unity by ensuring that the eventual standard bearer for the 2023 Presidential election embodies commitment to equity and justice as the underlying principles sustaining the corporate existence of Nigeria as a united country. This is not just about representation in terms of where the candidate comes from but mainly about the negotiation framework leading to the eventual selection of the candidate. In the case of the PDP, negotiation was limited to monetary transactions with the less than 1000 delegates who eventually elected Alh. Atiku Abubakar as the Presidential candidate of the PDP. With all the limitation imposed by the current Electoral Act, the delegates at the APC Convention who will be electing our Presidential candidate will not be less than 4000. For a party with more than 40 million members, this is a far cry and will be weak in terms of being democratically accountable in terms of decisions of delegates reflecting expectations party members. Once the choice of delegates correlates with expectations of over 40 million party members, invariably, it will most likely equate with the expectations of majority of Nigerians.

 

It is important therefore to caution our party that we must keep faith with basic tenets of democracy as our major campaign message to Nigerians for the 2023 elections. This was eloquently highlighted in Your Excellency's message to our Progressive Governors when you stated that 'the key to electoral successes is the ability to hold consultations and for members to put the nation above other interests.' The temptation for leaders to choose their successors is democratically risky and very costly. If in 2013/2014, Your Excellency, could submit yourself to internal democratic process, it is important that your successor also follow the same process.

 

It may also be necessary to highlight that a major disadvantage with succession arrangement whereby Governors chose their successors is that it negatively affects relationship between the successor and the predecessor, which undermine capacity to influence actions or inactions of successors by their predecessors. Your Excellency, since the period of negotiating the merger that produce our party APC, I have been a proponent of ensuring that our party take every step to preserve our leaders who could exercise moral authority. This means that leaders who are highly respected on account of their standing in society should not hold elective or appointive positions. It was for that reason that I openly campaigned against your aspiration to emerge as the Presidential candidate of our party for 2015 election.

 

Sir, recall that one of my arguments was that as President, the capacity of party leaders to influence your decisions will be weak. Without going into details, Your Excellency, this has come to pass. The big fear is that combining both legal and moral authority, being our President, if you are to nominate your successor to what extent can other party leaders influence your decision? If party leaders are unable to influence your decision with respect to the choice of successor, what will be the guarantee that your choice can aggregate the expectations of Nigerians?

 

Your Excellency, I ask these questions without prejudice to the unflinching confidence of party members in terms of your personal disposition to make all sacrifices necessary and make the best decision for our party and our nation. Notwithstanding, however, there is the overriding requirement to appeal to you to kindly resist the temptation. I would have wished we have enough time for open debate within our party. Unfortunately, as things are, we have less than one week to settle this matter. Sadly also, combination of inherited reality, and perhaps vested interests of some party leaders, processes of internal debates around this matter are being impeded. Even meetings of NWC are not exploring these issues. Even logistical issues of organising the National Convention are being handled informally. And as far as our National Chairman, Sen. Abdullahi Adamu is concerned, relating with you and probably directly communicating positions of members of NWC, is his exclusive jurisdiction, which limits you to selective perspective that may only be self-serving to some party leaders.

 

Being a party, which came with the promise of change, how our leader can directly access the views of party members is important. At the risk of again being projected to be against some party leaders, I want to appeal to all party leaders to unite in showing restraint at this point of transition. I want to strongly appeal to Your Excellency to kindly continue to make every sacrifice necessary to provide measured leadership to our party and our nation. Your revered status was earned not by following so-called conventions, which have narrowed our democracy. You have always summoned the courage to initiate leadership responses that are selfless based on commitment to principles of justice and equity.

 

I am confident that Allah (SWT) will guide you into taking the right decisions that would broaden the democratic scope in APC, continue to endear our great party to Nigerians and facilitate our electoral victory in 2023. Like in the case of December 10, 2014 APC National Convention, everything will be done at the June 6, 2022 APC National Convention to guarantee level playing field for all aspiring Presidential candidates of our party. Any recommendation to the contrary will be inimical and injurious to the electoral fortunes of our great party, APC.

 

May God protect our democracy and bless our nation, Nigeria. Amin!

 

 

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