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TINUBU REWARDING GOVERNORS FOR DOING WRONG THINGS – LUKMAN
Salihu Lukman, a chieftain of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) and former National Vice Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has criticised President Bola Tinubu for enabling what he described as financial recklessness by state governors.
Speaking on Sunrise Daily, a Channels Television programme, Lukman said that despite clear indications that some governors mismanage funds allocated to them, the president has continued to approve substantial disbursements to states without enforcing accountability.
“Yes, the president has said the right thing, but what is he doing to ensure that governors do what they need to do?” Lukman asked.
“The president can do something, but what I see him doing is to reward them for doing the wrong things.”
His comments follow Tinubu’s recent call for state governors to invest more in poverty alleviation and ensure that citizens feel the impact of governance. However, Lukman questioned the president’s follow-through, arguing that governors remain unaccountable because of their grip on party structures.
“Once we have a system where the structure of the party is subordinated to them, they will continue with this arrogance, and continue to be unaccountable and convert public resources as if it is their personal property,” he said.
Lukman also pointed to recent defections of opposition governors into the APC, suggesting the party’s recruitment strategy prioritises political expansion over accountability.
“When your recruitment policy in your party is blindly informed in a way that all you want is for people to come into your party without giving them the conditions that need to happen for them to be accountable to their people, the objectives of many of them become to be where they are and not to deliver services,” he stated.
He added that the APC had failed to live up to its promises, accusing its leaders of betraying the trust of party members. “In APC, we invested every trust in the leaders and at the end of the day, leaders betrayed that trust, and that is why APC is damaged today, whereby it is worse than the PDP,” he said.
Lukman said the ADC, which now serves as a platform for a broader opposition coalition, is aiming to hold political office holders accountable through party-led oversight if it wins power in future elections.
“The mistake many of us make is to imagine that leaders are rational and, left on their own, they will do the right thing. Our objective is to organise the party in such a way that governance is accountable to the party and aligned with the manifesto,” he added.
