The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is putting finishing touches to the idea of building Institute for Progressive Studies (IPS) in Nigeria.
The party’s national chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, who dropped this hint yesterday, August 7 while briefing news men on the outcome of the meeting of the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, said that they had already assured the President “of our commitment to build institute for progressive studies.”
According to Oshiomhole, Nigerians who belong to various political parties don’t understand the ideology of each party and are not familiar with the manifestos of the parties.
“And you will find that people holding very high positions in government, both legislative and executive and even party leaders, may not even be aware of what we stand for. And so we told the President that we are going to build institute for progressive studies so that people will understand what defines us; what is the essence of progressive politics, (which is) basically about social democracy.
“So our party must be seen to be pro-poor, putting policies in place that will lift our people out of poverty and recreate the Nigeria middle class. Unless you recreate the Nigeria middle class, you are not going to have a stable and a peaceful society.
“Secondly, as a political party which is committed to social democracy, we want to make sure that everybody elected on the platform of our party understands the dos and don’ts, in terms of politics and policy choices. Our commitment is to egalitarian society and all of those things that make a progressive party different from a Conservative party. We think this is not something we want to be doing on ad-hoc basis. We don’t want to go and sleep because we have won election; the fact that we have won election means a call to duty, so we have to work together to ensure these things are done.”
