A stitch in time saves nine

Being keynote address by the former governor of Ekiti State and ex-Chairman, Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) Dr John Kayode Fayemi to the South West assembly of All Progressives Congress (APC) at Eko Hotel, Lagos on Saturday, October 5, 2024.

Let me start by thanking the South West Coordinator of our party, His Excellency Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu and the party executives in the South West for the honour of this invitation. I was in New York for the historic United Nations Summit of the Future and the 79th annual General Assembly of the global body when I received Governor Sanwo-Olu’s call that I had been chosen by the team to give this address at the South West Assembly of our party. Judging by the tone and tenor of the call, it was clear that Governor Sanwo-Olu did not reach out to me simply to seek my opinion but rather to deliver a directive, as it were, for me to report back home for this important meeting.

Thus although I was supposed to leave New York directly for the United Kingdom to join colleagues at King’s College for the start of the new academic session that has seen the return of our students to the university campus over the past week, Governor Sanwo-Olu’s message necessitated a modification of my travel plans so as to be present with you today at this August meeting.

It is, therefore, with pleasure and honour that I am here to share some thoughts about the state of our party, its place in history and the road that lies ahead for us. In doing so, I know that the bonds of solidarity that we share will be renewed and strengthened.

We in the South West wing of our party constitute an important pillar of the APC. I warmly salute and commend the decision to convene this zonal Assembly of our party leaders and faithfuls for various reasons. On the one hand, it is a manifestation of a determination of the leadership to keep the party as vigorous and engaged as possible in the South West. On the other hand, it suggests a time-honoured tradition of bringing the leaders of the party together to have open and honest conversations among themselves in order to build the required consensus for taking the organisation to greater heights.

Furthermore, amid the heavy schedule which the various leaders assembled here run on a daily basis as bearers of various public responsibilities, focused gatherings of this nature allow for the renewal of the bonds of solidarity that we share and which we need for forging ahead in the face of different challenges. Allow me, therefore, to commend Governor Sanwo-Olu, his brother governors from the South West and the entire team of zonal party executives for this convening. I trust that it will mark a new phase in the development of our party in the South West. I also hope that the initiative will be emulated by other zones of the party across the country and may the ripples from the zones culminate in larger convening at the National Caucus and NEC of the party.

As a foundation member, and one of the many actors who worked tirelessly to help create the APC out of a coalition of like-minded parties and actors united by a progressive and forward-looking commitment to national unity and transformation, I was immeasurably proud of the zeal with which our cadres in the South West embraced the party’s agenda for change and renewal when it was announced to them. And we were fortunate to be blessed from the outset with a leadership group who left no stone unturned to ensure that we built the party as a united force that could be trusted by Nigerians and which had to be reckoned with by our competitors.

We owe these leaders an enormous debt of gratitude, knowing that history will remember them as a group of people who sacrificed enormously to help consolidate democratic governance in the biggest black nation on earth. I salute each and every one of them today, including our father, His Excellency, Chief Adebisi Akande, founding Chairman of the party, our President, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Aremo Olusegun Osoba, Otunba Adeniyi Adebayo and many leaders from our zone and others further afield such as our former President, His Excellency President Muhammadu Buhari, the late Chief Tony Momoh, Dr. Ogbonaya Onu of blessed memory, Chief John Odigie Oyegun and my brother Governors who held several meetings, which culminated in the Lagos House Declaration of February 5, 2013 where we unveiled to the public the impending merger of our legacy parties of ACN, CPC, ANPP and a section of APGA. I also pay tribute to the various members of the Working Committees and Executive Committees at all levels, past and present, for their dedication and diligence.

There have been several attempts at building progressive coalitions in our country but none has been as successful as the All Progressives Congress. During the First Republic, the United Progressive Grand Alliance was established by a group of opposition parties to try to wrest power from the ruling Nigeria National Alliance. During the second Republic, the Progressive Peoples Alliance was established as a coalition of opposition parties that joined forces to take on the ruling National Party of Nigeria.

However, these efforts at building a coalition of progressive forces faltered and failed to achieve their ultimate objective of winning power. Our party, the APC, is the first successful merger of political parties in the history of Nigeria not only to stay united but also to win power. In the previous instances, progressive alliances failed for a number of reasons. These include the deployment by ruling parties of various tactics to destabilise the progressive bloc, doing so through the use of money, thuggery and the manipulation of personality rivalries and differences among the key actors in the progressive camp.

There was also a basic lack of good faith and mutual trust among the parties attempting to coalesce, and an unwillingness among the key actors to abnegate and sacrifice for the greater good. Not surprisingly, those alliances were subverted by chronic infighting and personality clashes. Matters were not helped by poor internal organisation, a lack of institutional coherence, and various financial deficiencies.

Against all odds, and this is why we must give credit to the founding leaders of the APC, we were able to surmount various hurdles, bridge differences, resist external threats, and manage competing sense of entitlements to build the party and proceed to win an historic victory in the 2015 national elections – against an entrenched and formidable ruling party that had boasted that it would be the dominant party of power for at least sixty years.

In the period since we won power at the federal centre in 2015, we have built up considerable experience on what works and what does not work in the administration of national affairs and in the management of a party that emerged out of a coalition. We have responded firmly to the supply side and trickle down economics of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that had failed in its 16 years in power to empower the bulk of the Nigerian populace.

As a progressive alternative to the PDP, we embraced a more grassroots model of economic development prioritising the delivery of social services and safety nets, promoting a modern and functional education system that provides marketable labour skills, supporting increased agricultural productivity and output to boost food security, and fostering the development of a knowledge economy through expanded access to higher education and digital solutions.

Among the various successes we have recorded are: the massive leadership we have shown in the development of the national infrastructure, the makings of a national social policy system, the unleashing of a national innovation system, the reinvigoration of long-term, multi-year development planning and investment, and the facilitation of the creative industry, to cite just a few. These initiatives have been further deepened, most recently, by many policies on tax reforms, students loans, consumer credit, climate change mitigation and adaptation, the easing of the requirements for doing business, and power sector reforms whose benefits are gradually beginning to materialise.

As a social democratic party, we promoted the ideals of government as a catalyst for development and not a mere bystander that seeks to sell off public assets. Additionally, we have fulfilled our 2015 manifesto promise of establishing regional economic development hubs in all zones of the country, the last of which is the South West Development Commission recently passed into law by the National Assembly. In our view, the adoption of regional integration strategies based on progressive economic principles are a sine qua non for the transformation of Nigeria’s political economy to enable the country take its rightful place in the comity of nations at the forefront of human progress. It is our expectation that these development commissions will help achieve the desired objective of accelerated economic development in the various zones. So, we have every reason to be proud of the various achievements we have registered, and party officials and members at all levels should feel encouraged to speak to them at every opportunity.

Challenges
There have, however, also been challenges of differing magnitudes, and which are not always of our making, that have either obstructed us or even thwarted some of our noble plans and stymied some of the gains we registered. Not least among these challenges is the security situation in the country, a problem we inherited and which has continued to be a source of immense worry for all Nigerians, and rightly so.

Understandably, the security question remains a topmost priority for President Tinubu. Added to this are adverse domestic pressures and external shocks on the economy that have exacerbated the cost of living, and affected our quest to massively dent unemployment, especially as it affects the teeming population of young people. We are also confronted with the task of stabilising the exchange rate of our national currency even as concerted efforts are being made to erode the parallel market, increase the capital budget in our national expenditure profile, and meet our various international obligations.

These are not problems that are easy to tackle, especially as the roots of many of them date back to the locust years of the PDP and resolving them requires time, patience, and understanding. It is correct that as the ruling party, we must confront them frontally without forgetting that we also owe a duty to explain our remedial and reform measures with all the empathy and humility that we can muster.

Your Excellencies, esteemed leaders and members of the South West APC, the import of the foregoing is simple: While we can be proud of the road we have travelled since 2015, we cannot afford to rest on our laurels as a party or be complacent about anything. It is imperative that we openly and honestly acknowledge current challenges and develop a coherent and comprehensive plan that can enable us to confront them. This we must do by resolutely learning lessons of experience. We should also be ready to mobilise ourselves for the urgent and necessary task of rebuilding the hope of our compatriots both in Project Nigeria and in our ability as a party committed to leading the charge against underdevelopment, disunity, and insecurity.

Without being defensive or unduly apologetic, we must dig deep to find that combination of humility, a sense of public service, an uncommon courage, and a tenacity of purpose to drive a shared national vision. These qualities served us so well in 2015 as to enable us to write an important new chapter in our national electoral history. They can and will serve us well again if we re-commit to them.

I am convinced that the APC remains the party that is best placed to carry forward the unfinished agenda of our national renewal to which we committed as a united body of compatriots coming from all parts of Nigeria. And as our leader and the President of the Federal Republic is working with his team to uphold those ideals under the Renewed Hope agenda, it is absolutely important that we as party members must commit and, as needed, recommit ourselves to assisting him in realising the ideals. In doing so, I am also acutely aware of the need for us to continue to nurture internal party democracy operationalised within the boundaries of civil contestation of ideas, robust debates around policy alternatives, and responsible dissent. In this connection, we must work with our elected officials from the ward to the national level to ensure that our members are actively socialised into our vision, principles, programmes, and policies.

Mechanisms for strengthening the resource base and rewards system of the party should be improved upon so that elected officials, employees, volunteers, and members who service our various structures are able to carry out their work with predictability, integrity, and consistency and not reduced to supplicants at the tables of political appointees. Invigorating our elected party structures will also involve a much closer attention to our programmes and policies. The President and members of the executive branch of government must also create avenues to listen more to feedback from the grassroots and provide vehicles for party members to ventilate well-considered concerns about policies and programmes.

I believe that we in the South West should set the example by committing ourselves to ensuring that every year, our zonal party convenes a policy conference to review the progress we have made in carrying out our programmes and recalibrating our objectives and strategy in accordance with changing needs and circumstances. The recent launching of the APC Institute by the current national leadership of the party is a highly commendable initiative, which we should take full advantage of by using it effectively for the induction, training, and retooling of our officials, and for the purpose of next generation leadership grooming and mentorship.

Furthermore, our governors should deepen the use of the Progressive Governors’ Forum (PGF) and the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN) Commission as formidable resources for embedded but autonomous policy advice in the administration of national affairs and the promotion of baseline standards in the management of the states controlled by our party. Similar platforms for the Speakers of our State Houses of Assembly and Chairs of our local government councils should become active fora for consultation, coordination, and harmonisation. An active caucus between our leaders in the party’s National Secretariat and the zones, the National Assembly, and key actors in the Presidency should be activated and formalised to ensure that the party and its officials in the executive and legislative arms of government work in concert.

In order to renew and extend our position as a credible political force worthy of continuing to enjoy the respect and support of Nigerians in a season of uncertainty and polycrisis such as is being experienced around the world, we should spare no effort to ensure that we win the fight that must be fought with tenacity against insecurity, banditry, unemployment, poverty, inequality, threats of national disintegration, and lawlessness. To this end, working with other key leaders of the party, we must come up with workable strategies to assist our government. The renewal of the capacity, agility, and credibility of the key institutions of state must necessarily be accompanied with comprehensive policy initiatives designed to tackle the roots of the problems that have continued to wrack our country and test the faith of the citizenry.

Our party, particularly in the South West should commit to the facilitation of wealth and employment creation for our people, the expansion of our national social security and skills acquisition policies to enhance human development, the wholesale revamp of our national educational system to ensure it is fit for purpose, and the intensive fostering of measures aimed at expanding inclusivity for those who are objectively marginalized in the polity.

In this regard, we owe it to ourselves and our people to ensure that our women, the youth, and people living with disability who represent some of our greatest national assets must be judiciously developed and utilised for the good of our country.

The APC, as the party of Nigeria, has a duty to also be the champion of women, the promoter of youth, and the defender of people living with disability, as our party manifesto and constitution espoused comprehensively. That’s why we must also commend the President for announcing the national conversation on youth matters in his independence anniversary speech a few days ago. Our youth should mobilise and take advantage of the opportunity.

Excellencies and esteemed members, it bears restating that we are progressives, we are not conservatives. The APC must confront the status quo with progressive and game changing ideas aimed at redeeming our land and its people. We must address the moral deficit that has led to the breakdown of our values system, causing hydra headed symptoms such as corruption, crass incompetence and ethno-religious bigotry to fester. We have to reach out to the mass of our people who are fed up with the old business as usual syndrome in governance, and who still hold on tenaciously, even if increasingly nervously, to the promise of the deep changes expressed by our renewed hope agenda.

We must rediscover and walk in the tradition of our progressive forebears who stood out among their peers and were respected by all for the commitment they displayed to the pursuit of intellectual rigour, quality policy ideas, and an impeccable vision of national advancement. It was such commitment that won hearts and minds among the mass of the people.

Our aim should be the creation of an organic movement of progressive ideas and citizens rather than an election machine hastily cobbled together for Election Day dramatics. In this regard, we must revisit the wholesale registration of party membership as a means of re-energising the party. We must allow a thousand flowers to bloom. A political party by its very nature is not an Alleluia chorus but a marketplace of ideas and contention. We should encourage robust debates and disagree if we must but do so without being disagreeable. This is the imperative that is upon us and it’s time to ensure that the opportunity we have been given is complimented with steely resolve and adequate preparation.

Esteemed leaders of our great party, we are the inheritors of a party of destiny. We should be proud to be APC members and also proudly Nigerian at all times and in all circumstances. The unity, peace, security, progress, and prosperity of our country should be paramount to us. As a party, we need to create opportunities for all Nigerians to be able to achieve their highest aspirations as free citizens operating within the ambit of the law and with a spirit of solidarity that says that as a people, we shall walk together, hand in hand, in the forward march to destiny. That is the only guarantee that can sustain us and earn us the love, respect and loyalty of our citizens.

Being keynote address by the former governor of Ekiti State and ex-Chairman, Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) Dr John Kayode Fayemi to the South West assembly of All Progressives Congress (APC) at Eko Hotel, Lagos on Saturday, October 5, 2024.