TheCable

Solomon Dalung, minister of youths and sports, says the problems inherited from the past Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) administration are enough to birth a crisis in the All Progressives Congress (APC).

However, he urged leaders of the party to sheath their swords and be “guided by the fact that the younger ones are interested to learn positively from them”.

Speaking with journalists on Thursday at the national secretariat of the party in Abuja, Dalung said that although APC started as a movement, it was a political system with diverse interests.

“I think we should try and appreciate the chemistry of what is referred to as APC today. APC started as amalgamation of different political groups then graduated into a mass movement and formed government,” Dalung said.

“The significance of this is that this is a political system that has an embodiment of diverse interests. Now, the management of that interest is very critical, but the challenge the party and the government are facing is that the government itself inherited a situation where it has more challenges of fixing the country, and so nothing or no good attention at all would have trickled down along the line in view of the economic constraints government finds itself. That is enough to stir bitterness in the party and this can give birth to crisis.

“The second perspective you could take a look at has to do with the future; a politician is very ambitious person. In everything he does, including the step of movement, he calculates ahead of time. So, it could also be that some politicians had viewed the future and they are already dusting weapon for a political showdown to set the tone for their political ambition.

“There is no reasonable person in government that won’t be worried, because the unity of the party is the unity of the government. So we are concerned. Our position is to appeal that all those who are involved in the crisis are our leaders and we respect them very much as young people.

“What we expect from them is to bequeath durable legacies and I don’t think that this crisis is part of what  they intend to bequeath to us. They should be guided by the fact that the younger ones are interested to learn positively from them. Everybody should sheath his sword and appreciate the contribution of re-fixing Nigeria and let the the future determine [their ambitions].”

He added that it was “a thing of great joy” to welcome to his party, Joshua Dariye, a former governor of Plateau state who was in the PDP.