He made the disclosure on Tuesday evening when he received the United Kingdom Member of Parliament for Edmonton, Kate Osamor at the party national secretariat in Abuja.
He called for greater participation of women in politics as a way to increase their representation in government and party structures.
“As politicians, we want to bring the youth in to become politicians early. When we encourage the young ones to be politicians early, in a few years, they will compete with anybody. They will equally boast of how long they have been in politics also and the men will know that they have to give way to them. That is one of the programmes that we believe we can benefit from your experience.”
The APC chieftain also told the visiting United Kingdom Member of Parliament that the President Buhari APC-led administration has initiated several pro-people initiatives including the Home Grown School Feeding Programme and N-Power scheme to alleviate poverty and provide gainful economic opportunities for the masses.
He said government was open to ideas and best practices to develop the country, reduce poverty and productively engage its young population.
“Our population is growing at a very fast rate but opportunities are not growing. Therefore we need help in terms of exchange of ideas and opportunities that will actively and productively engage our young population.”
He further disclosed that the APC-led administration is working assiduously to totally eliminate salary arrears soon.
“We are doing something which people have not recognised as a cardinal signature of the progressives. We are trying to eradicate salary arrears. Past governments, particularly at the state levels owed salaries. This government has been trying to help them (states) pay the arrears and very soon we are going to have a check on how much is left everywhere to be paid. But substantially, a bulk of salary arrears is paid now.
“The people who are owed salaries are mostly the downtrodden and when they are owed, you compound the poverty equation. We are working towards ensuring that in no distant future, arrears will be eliminated. The only way we can do it is through the bailout funds to states. Because we cannot control what the governor would do because he is chief executive, but when there are bailout funds, we believe that they will apply it to settle salary arrears.”
In his remarks, the UK MP for Edmonton, Kate Osamor narrated the challenges faced by her political party, Labour Party in the build up to the June 8 Snap General Election in the United Kingdom.
“One of the things which the Labour Party had to do to be successful in our last snap general election was to reach out to the people who are downtrodden, the people who are working for minimum wage or on contracts when they don’t know how often they will be paid. We had to look at all the issues and put a manifesto together which spoke to them. Because when we went into the snap general elections, as far as the commentators were saying, as far as people in our own party were saying, we were going to be in the dustbin of history, we would have to start again. “But what the manifesto did was open up the eyes and ears of young people, of people who had access to vote but never voted and for those people who voted for the first time. If we had not done that, we wouldn’t have got to a point where we were able to have a hung parliament.” She said.
Osamor said that the UK’s Labour Party was ready to share its experiences, good practices with the APC.
“We are very happy to share our experiences with you. Because it shows that no party is standstill. At some points the party may feel that it is going through a difficult phase, how do we get out of it? But we are going through that and we assist the party so we will obviously work together and share good practice.”
She thanked the APC leadership for its support and promised to extend the Party’s well-wishes to the current seven UK MPs of Nigerian descent.
Also present at the meeting were the APC National Youth Leader, Hon Dasuki Ibrahim Jalo; Chief of Staff to the APC National Chairman, Mr Edwin Ikhinmwin and Country Representative, Westminister Foundation for Democracy, Mr Adebowale Olorunmola.
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