The National Chairman of All Progressives Congress, APC, Dr. Abdullahi Ganduje, said yesterday the party has introduced an intellectual wing, Progressive Institute, to set agenda and offer solutions to the challenges bedeviling the country.
Ganduje, who stated this while speaking with members of Kano Correspondent Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists,, NUJ, in his office, also said the party was battle ready to dislodge the opposition parties in Edo and Anambra states in the forthcoming elections, and strategizing ahead to capture the South Eastern states.
He said the intellectual wing was to pick up on national issues begging for attention, analyze it and proffer solutions to help the government.
“We established what we called an intellectual wing for the party, progressives institute. It is to analyse national issues, so the members can get the attention of the government to become an agenda for the government.
“If you could recall, at a time, we even organised a national conference for livestock reforms after the incessant farmers and herders clashes. Like we said, the relationship between farmers and herders many years ago was a symbiotic relationship, where farmers got the benefit of manure from the livestock, while herders got grazing areas from the farmers.
”But with the coming into being of fertilizer, the farmer doesn’t require much of the manure of the cow, while the cow still requires their services for grazing. So, with the growing population, you find the grazing areas have been reduced and that creates a serious problem.
”So we organise a national conference that has led to the creation of the ministry of livestock which will soon be inaugurated by the president. And we hope we will kill so many birds with one stone.
“First of all, we reduce the issue of conflict and security issue. Second, we modernise the issue of livestock production, which is a new phenomenon and third, the education of the herdsmen which will be for national development.
“Now, we have recently observed that the level of unemployment is going high in the country, especially youth unemployment, and we are organising a national conference to that effect. We will soon know how we can modernise or reform our national curriculum, even including university curriculum, so that the graduates we will produce will be employable graduates, not unemployable graduates like we are having now,” Ganduje said.
On the forthcoming elections in Edo, Ondo and Anambra states, he said: “Let’s start with Edo, which is coming on September 21, 2024. I believe our campaign is with high spirit, we are getting ready for that election and we believe we will be able to recover our state because it was an APC state but because of internal squabbles, we lost it to PDP. But we are sure we will recover that state.
“For Ondo State, it’s already an APC state and when the former governor died, a number of problems came up on who succeeds him but we were able to resolve those issues. We conducted primaries, we succeeded in getting the person that they want.
“We are also getting ready for that election which is coming up in November. If we win Edo, we will be getting an additional state for the party. It will be 21 states out of 36.
“Next year, there will be election in Anambra which has been a state governed by APGA for many years but we have introduced a new scheme. The South East political zone is claiming that it has been marginalised but what we are telling them is that those marginalisations have been created by them. ‘
“How can you have five states and ruled by four political parties. What will be your political bargain? So, we have introduced a new phenomenon which we call the political marginalisation of the southeast geopolitical zone where we are working very hard to ensure that we get more states from that zone and we want to start with Anambra.
“Already, we have Ebonyi, Imo states, now we are encroaching into that zone to ensure we capture most of the states. And if we get what we want, we capture all the states.”“Ganduje, however, hinted on plans by the party to introduce e-registration of members of the party, internal democracy in the party, changing narrative of the party from only active during electioneering year to all year round and also preparations ahead of the National Executive Council, NEC, meeting of the party.
