The Director General of the Progressives Governors’ Forum , Dr. Salihu Lukman , has urged elected and appointed members of the All Progressives Congress to remain faithful to the commitment to service instead of the cheap resort to baseless propaganda.
He explained that a resort to propaganda in the sight of an obvious failure to respond to the demands of citizens , alienates leaders and erodes the party’ s electoral viability .
Lukman said this in a paper titled, ‘ Political Contestation in Nigeria : Challenges of Benchmarking Party Manifesto , ’ presented at the Annual Conference of the APC Press Corps , in Abuja . The paper was made available on Sunday.
The PGF DG said , “ Inability to respond to the demands of citizens alienate leaders and erode electoral viability . Most times, we imagine that resort to propaganda can resolve our societal and national challenges. This is very wrong.
“ We can do all the propaganda and take over all the media spaces in our constituencies and in the country , it will not change the reality facing citizens. This is mainly because propaganda that is not founded on strategic and concrete responses to our societal and national problems , will not improve the lives of citizens .
“ Thus , beyond propaganda , both as citizens and party members , we have a responsibility to get our leaders to apply themselves very effectively and honestly to resolve our societal and national challenges . Achieving this entails that our leaders should recognise they don’ t have all the solutions .
“ This is where as politicians , most times, we fail because we engage citizens with the false claim that we have all the answers and anyone with a contrary position is an opponent , if not enemy . Once this is the case , ab initio , political contestation is blocked. ”
