TINUBU: WE CREATED APC TO REPRESENT THE PEOPLE’S INTERESTS

National leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and former governor of Lagos State, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has revealed that the opposition party was created to represent the interests and welfare of Nigerians.
The APC, formed in February 2013, was as a result of a merger of Nigeria’s four biggest opposition parties: the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), and a faction the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), which merged to take on the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP).
Tinubu, who also outlined some ideologies of the APC, stated these in a letter of appreciation written to THISDAY Editorial Board and Management in response to his award as the newspaper’s 2013 Man of the Year.
In the detailed letter dated January 25, 2014 and titled “Appreciation: Man of the Year”, the APC leader thanked THISDAY and its staff members for honouring him.
However, he added that the honour did not belong to him alone. “None of the achievements associated with my name could have been done without the contributions of many other men and women who have committed themselves to the establishment of democratic good governance and economic justice in this home we call Nigeria,” he had said in the letter.
“We have a mission that we must fulfil. That is why we joined to establish the All Progressives Congress. We did this not to create another political party. Nigeria has numerous political parties already. We created the All Progressive Congress to give institutional shape and form to a political movement that represents the interests and welfare of most of our people.”
The party, he pledged, “shall work to improve the human condition. We must improve the way Nigerians live and relate to one another. Not all can be rich but our nation suffers too many who are poor. No one enjoys a trouble free life but too many are chained to despair. We must break the chains of their unnecessary suffering. This must be our collective gift to our humanity.
He debunked the assertion by the ruling party to the effect that APC has no ideology. “We have an ideology but it is one PDP can’t understand. What the arrogant don’t understand, they pretend does not exist.”
“The PDP claims to believe in the free market. But the market they constructed is not free except that it has been free to work grave injustice on poor and working people of this land.
“Our ideology is the opposite. We believe every able-bodied person who wants to work should have a job with a living wage. Thus, we advocate a national employment policy and jobs program where government will help place people at work to build this nation from the bottom up.
“We believe in feeding the nation, thus we must encourage and protect the Nigerian farmer. We shall look to revive commodity exchange boards to guarantee our farmers a decent price for the yield of their labours.
“There are many other important points of departure between our progressive ideology and the PDP’s conservative one but this letter is not the place to delineate them all. The above examples suffice to draw the distinction between our principled movement and their cynical amalgamation.”
The new party, he continued, has resolved to act on the side of justice.
Source: Thisday