APC governors adopt common governance initiative, distance party from PDP

Governors elected on the platform of All Progressives Congress (APC) under the aegis of the Progressive Governors Forum have concluded plans to adopt a common governance initiative across all APC states.

The governors said they want to create a distinct identity for the party that will separate it from other political parties in the country.

The governors set a PGF Governance Programme Steering Committee headed by the Governors of Jigawa and Plateau states, tasked with the responsibility of looking at how they govern their states.

Chairman of the Progressives Governors’ Forum and Plateau State governor, Solomon Lalong who apoke at the inaugural meeting of the Steering Committee in Abuja on Friday, said the APC governors needed to aggressively ensure that they were able to settle all public debates around the distinction between the APC on the one hand and the PDP and other parties on the other hand.

Lalong was represented by his Deputy, Prof. Sonni Gwanle Tyoden.

According to him, “Given the challenge of ensuring that we achieve the vision of making our party, the APC, emerge as a distinctly social democratic party, the policy initiatives of all APC governments, particularly at the state levels, will be the defining credentials. In addition, ensuring uniformity of policy initiatives among the APC states is a fundamental requirement.

“Between 2015 and 2019, as Progressive Governors, we made quite some efforts to adopt common initiatives. Based on assessment of initiatives from our states and critical assessments of the challenges facing our states, Forum has already agreed to some priorities, which include revenue mobilisation, funding for security, education and health.

“Through the work of our Secretaries of Governments of APC States, facilitated by the Governance Programme Steering Committee, Forum has already adopted Prototype Bills in the four areas mentioned above for domestication in our states.

“While in some cases progress have been made, it needs to be acknowledged that much work will be required, especially in ensuring that progress being recorded translate to producing a distinctive governance and political identity for all APC states.

“We need to aggressively ensure that we are able to settle all public debates around the distinction between APC, on the one hand, and PDP and other parties, on the other. It is not a theoretical issue but concretely about the initiatives coming from APC governments, especially the states.

“With the experiences we had between 2015 and 2019, we want to ensure that we are able to speed up actions to produce these common initiatives. Recognising the profile of members of our Governance Programme Steering I have no doubt that the quality of output based on input from activities we will be initiating will help to speed up progress in ensuring the emergence of some uniform attributes for all APC States.”