By Ibrahim Sha’aban
The National Leader of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Bola Tinubu, Wednesday reacted to the way and manner his party is fast losing the goodwill expressed by Nigerians that heralded the party’s victory in the 2015 elections.
According to him, reasons for some of these challenges to the party might have come as a result of its inexperience in governance.
Mr Tinubu stated this in Abuja while intimating the National Chairman, Odigie Oyegun, and members of the National Working Committee, NWC, and other party leaders on how he would execute the assignment given to him by President Muhammadu Buhari to reconcile aggrieved party men.
“We worked hard for victory. We have never governed before, but we won the confidence of Nigerians to govern. We have a creed to really serve the country; change and reform the country.
“It is not easy to have those changes implemented like instant coffee. We have to grow it and face challenges. I sympathise with us and we should equally look at ourselves. Since we won the election, the expectations were very high and the goodwill was extremely high. But where are we today?,” Mr Tinubu lamented.
He, however, said that the party and its administration would remain to true to its challenges by trying to do something to improve the lives of Nigerians.
“It is only because people are not paying attention to the various statistics that are available and we had to push out. But I won’t touch those areas yet.
The challenges of security, the challenges of reforms and re-engineering the finances of this country, stopping corruption and challenging the status quo to change and reform ourselves are there. It doesn’t go away overnight. You should work on it and work hard at it,” he said.
While speaking on the outcome of the meeting, which lasted for over two hours, the National Publicity Secretary, Bolaji Abdullahi, said it was an exploratory meeting meant to spell out the rules of engagement.
He said that the leadership of the party made it clear that it was ready to work with him to actualise his mandate.
“In whatever way we need to assist Asiwaju in this assignment we will be ready to do so,” he said.
On Tinubu’s term of reference, Abdullahi said that it was to identify areas of conflict within the party and to find ways of resolving them.
Earlier, while welcoming Mr Tinubu to the party headquarters, Mr Oyegun expressed the hope that Mr Tinubu’s intervention would help “to heal wounds, where the party has wounds, and bring everybody together behind one single objective”.
“There is no question at all that we have major issues with the National Assembly, major issues in Kano, Kogi, and Benue States.
“So, we truly welcome your appointment and I want to say that we will give you all the assistance that you will possibly need to make your assignment a most successful one,” he said.
