The national vice chairman northeast of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Comrade Mustapha Salihu has disclosed that despite the little hiccups in the party, it is stronger now than ever expressing optimism of the party’s comprehensive victory come 2023.
Salihu who disclosed during the northeast zonal tour of the party in Yola, on Monday, noted that the meeting with stakeholders in Yola has yielded fruitful results adding that with the candid manner stakeholders spoke, solutions are very much in sight.
“Conflict rather than peaceful growth is the engine for progress. Society itself moves in cyclical nature from antithesis to synthesis and that is how it moves cyclically until it achieves optimal equilibrium where you have peace not just absence of violence but also in the presence of justice.
“We are more than optimistic about victory. If you see a political party being quiet after primaries that scenario is what we call graveyard silence. It is dangerous.
“It is good for the people to voice out their grievances so that you can follow them house to house and beg them to reconcile and come to work together. In 2019 you remember we don’t have any cases in court. People kept quiet but they fought us during the election and we lost. It is good now we see various uprising coming up so that we will address them together,” he noted.
Also responding to a question over the vexatiMuslims-Muslislim ticket adopted by his party, Salihu said although he respects the opinion of those who are voicing their concerns against the Muslim-Muslim ticket said the inclination towards religious politics is a danger to our nascent democracy.
“I don’t see religion as a social cleavage. I see class as a better and stronger cleavage than religion. I prefer we talk about having and the have-notes than for me to be talking about religion as a social cleavage.
“At the upper echelon when people go to share money, when they go to discuss businesses, when they go to discuss partnerships in blue-chip companies nobody talks about religion. No one talks about how many shares should go to Muslims or Christians why are they using it against us? It is fundamentally wrong. I’m not dignifying any agitations using religion as a yardstick.
“In this gathering, we have senior Christians who spoke well. I don’t want to jettison the aspiration or the yearning of other Christians who seek to have a Christian as running mate but I don’t want to use it as a yardstick,” he said.
Salihu noted that the northeast secretariat will come up with a compendium to document the complaints, suggestions, and concerns made by members so that appropriate measures could be adopted to ensure the unification of the party ahead of the 2023 election.
