Salihu Lukman, a former national vice chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the former director general of the Progressive Governors’ Forum (PGF), has stated that election tampering is now necessary for the party to win.
In a statement released on Wednesday, Lukman said he felt compelled to write to a select party leaders in an attempt to make clear where he stood on the issues facing the party and the nation as a whole.
“It is a shared concern of most leaders of the party that the situation in the country has deteriorated in the last year since the assumption of office of President Bola Tinubu.
“Given a reality that the party structures have been demobilized and the government is implementing policies that have eroded the value of incomes of citizens, conditions of living are rapidly getting worse by the day. With that, both the APC and the governments it controls are getting more and more unpopular.
“It doesn’t require any investigation, at this rate, there is no way we can win election except through rigging. The popular saying in the country now is that President Tinubu is a one-term President. The hard truth is that the country will be lucky to get to 2027, without witnessing upheavals,” he stated.
He asserts that in light of Nigerians’ experiences with both former President Muhammadu Buhari and current President Tinubu, the country’s citizens ought to draw the right conclusions and prioritize building a robust party organization going forward that is capable of subordinating the President and all elected officials to party organs.
“Given all this, it is not possible to remain in APC, if at all President Tinubu will allow internal reform in the party to return it to its founding vision, which as it is, is very remote. But my reality now in the party is that my membership has been rendered useless and there is no need for me to continue to impose myself.
Lukman said he had given up hope that President Tinubu could do much in his first year of aimless leadership and prayed that God would change President Tinubu’s heart to restore what little of his democratic credentials remained.
