The Director General of the Progressives Governors Forum, Dr. Salihu Lukman, has said the likes of former Minister of Aviation, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, do not deserve to be accommodated in the All Progressives Congress because he doesn’t share the values the party was built on.
Lukman said this in a statement titled, “APC and the Question of Values,” which he signed and made public in Abuja, on Friday.
He explained that it was now public knowledge that many members and leaders of the governing party have made it known that the former minister lacks the rudiments of progressive politics.
Lukman said, “The report about the controversial attempt by Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode to join the APC and the insistence by many APC members and leaders that Mr. Fani-Kayode is not welcome to join APC because he doesn’t have the values required to be a member,” elicited a lot of reactions from Nigerians.
The PGF DG noted that, “Dr. Sam Amadi, a good friend of mine argued that ‘APC has no defined values or defining values. ‘APC is a normless contraption, like Nigeria.’ Another gentleman, of the platform Prof. Toyin Falola facilitated- USA Africa Dialogue Series, asked the questions, ‘Are the parties (APC and PDP) anything more than instruments for capturing power?”
According to him, while the APC cannot claim to be a perfect political party because it is populated by human beings vulnerable to mistakes, it can at least boast of being a platform where members can air their views without fear of retribution.
He denounced Fani-Kayode’s approach to politics, saying, “Often, we use all these aggressive languages to weaken the confidence of people we regard as opponents. It is a universal reality. It is the same strategy used to promote racial and gender inequality.
“Therefore, we can be proud of our identity, our choices, etc. but once we begin to speak to each other in derogatory terms, we lose our humanity. If our politics is defined only in those derogatory terms, then we are as useless as any other leader we seek to condemn. It doesn’t matter our sophistication, qualification, or any quality we chose to claim.”
