Underfunding APC is part of change mantra, says Ganduje

Abdullahi Ganduje, governor of Kano state, says underfunding the All Progressives Congress (APC) is part of the ruling party’s change mantra.

Ganduje said this in an interview with Vanguard, when he was asked what was responsible for the underfunding of the APC.

He said things were different under President Muhammad Buhari’s administration as the era of people getting “cheap money” was over.

The Kano governor said a political party is supposed to create avenues to fund itself.

He also explained that if the party had programmes on board, the governors would see to it that they are sponsored.

“It is part of the change mantra. People were used to getting cheap money; some struggled to be party officials in order to make money but President Buhari is not like that. If the party has programmes on the ground, the governors have no problem to see how the party can be funded,” Ganduje said.

“But the issue of taking government money to fund the party does not arise now, it is the challenge of all political parties; we have to look inwards. And here in Kano we have devised a system of funding the party by tasking political office holders to pay some fraction of their salaries and allowances to fund the party.

“We will not allow the party to crumble but, at the same time, we will not allow the party to flourish to the extent that it will now be business as usual and corruption becomes attractive. We will bail out when we have seen concrete and realistic things that would be executed.

“In fact, a political party as an institution is supposed to be creating avenues to fund itself but because we are used to bringing money from government to nourish political parties, that is why our perception is still like that. But a political party has to think of ways to invest, to do something that would make it sustainable.”

The governor said the disagreements between the executive and the legislature is “part of democracy”.

He said at the end of such disagreements, solutions would be found to the problems.

“Another aspect is that democracy is growing and some of the disagreements you see are part of democracy because the executive has to swallow the bitter pills sometimes,” he said.

“The legislature sometimes has to withstand the pressures from the executive and, at the end of it, there will be a solution. It is even better than when everything is quiet or smooth. It will look like things are staged-managed.”