Adedayo Akinwale in Abuja
The Progressive Governors Forum (PGF) has inaugurated Governance Programme Steering Committee as part of its plan to ensuring uniformity of policy initiatives in all the All Progressives Congress (APC) controlled states.
The Governor of Jigawa State, Mohammed Abubakar, disclosed this yesterday in Abuja while addressing journalists after the inaugural meeting of the PGF Governance Programme Steering Committee.
He said the committee would focus more on strengthening the capacity of the APC states to have increased commitment to implement approved initiatives.
Abubakar said that this might require more initiatives around issues of capacity development for functionaries of the APC states, stressing that this would have to be well tailored around the initiatives they subscribe to rather than the generic approach.
He assured the committee of the APC governors commitment to serve the people and nation, adding that the committee should consider the work of the committee as an opportunity to directly engage the governors to strengthening governance initiatives across all APC states.
Abubakar explained that the initiative basically would focus on what the party agreed in its manifesto, and the key fundamentals that APC had campaigned for during the election and to improve on what they have done.
Asked if the Forum would have a peer review of the various states’ programmed considering some have enabled on free education, while some haven’t, he added that there would certainly be a peer review mechanism, noting that the issue of agriculture and free education would be looked at to have a uniform programme across the APC States.
On his part, Plateau State governor, Simon Lalong, said that between 2015 and 2019, APC governors have made quite some efforts to adopt common initiatives.
He added that based on assessment of initiatives from APC controlled states and critical assessments of the challenges facing them, the Forum has already agreed to some priorities, which include revenue mobilisation,
He stated: “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.
“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.”
Lalong noted that the APC states need to aggressively ensure that they are able to settle all public debates around the distinction between APC, on one hand, and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and other parties, on the other hand.
He added that with the experiences they had between 2015 and 2019, they want to ensure that they are able to speed up actions to produce these common initiatives.
The Platean state governor noted that considering the profile of members of the committee, he said the activities they would be initiating would help to speed up progress in ensuring the emergence of some uniform attributes for all APC States.
