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APC Paid for Its Mistakes, Says Ganduje
Ibrahim Shuaibu in Kano
Kano State Governor, Dr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje has admitted that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) committed a lot of mistakes in the last elections and had paid the price.
Ganduje spoke yesterday at the town hall event for APC’s constitution review for North-west Zone held at the Kano State Government House.
Ganduje argued that the party was still a “mixture” and was yet to form a “compound”.
According to him, APC is a mixture of political parties, who merged to form the ruling party, adding that lack of strong cohesion is still affecting it.
He said there was no better time for the constitution review than now because the party had committed a lot of mistakes and paid for it, stressing that “It is time to look back and address the problems.
“There is no better time than now for the review of this constitution. APC as a political party has won many states in the Federation since its inception. It has been controlling the federal government in the past six years.
“Now in the second term, we lost some governors during the last election. We gained some governors during the last election. We committed a lot of mistakes as a party and we have paid for it. So, it is time now to look back and reassess the situation; that is, reviewing the Constitution of our great party.
“I believe at the end of it, we will come up with a document that will govern the conduct of the party members and even the conduct of the leaders of the party,” Ganduje added.
Ganduje lamented that the ruling APC was still grappling to graduate from being a mixture to compound, noting that “APC is a mixture of various elements trying to form a compound. But unfortunately, up til now, APC is still a mixture. It has not graduated to the next level of becoming a compound.”
“So, we believe this review of the constitution will look into that. It will remove all those appendages that came together to form the party should be prescribed to form a single, solid APC,” Ganduje said.
The governor disclosed that there was a strong party structure in Kano State.
Also speaking, the Chairman of the APC Constitution Review Committee, Dr. Tahir Mamman said the idea behind the review was to form a more solid and stronger document that would guide the affairs of the party and become a model to other political parties.
Tahir explained that the exercise was to further strengthen the manifesto of the party and make the document easier to read by all party members.
He added that the committee had gone round the six geo-political zones of the country to have town hall meetings with the party stakeholders, adding that there would be a retreat where resolutions would be made to come up with a final review.
Chairmen of the APC in Kano, Katsina, Jigawa, Kaduna, Zamfara, Kebbi and Sokoto states submitted their recommendations to the committee, with most of them calling for the translation of the constitution into different Nigerian languages.