When aggrieved politicians within the People’s Democratic
Party (PDP) decided to join forces with members of the Action Congress of
Nigeria (ACN), the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), the All Nigeria
Peoples Party (ANPP) and the All Progressives Peoples Alliance (APGA) to form
the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2013, they had well-defined, if not so
clearly stated, even if poorly conceived objectives: to send President Goodluck
Jonathan out of power, displace the PDP which had clearly become a dominating
hegemonic party, exert vengeance and offer the people an alternative.
The triumph of the APC in the 2015 elections resulting in
victory at the Presidential level, in 23 states out of 36, and also in the
legislature, state and federal, was propelled on the wings of the people’s
embrace of this slogan of change. Change became the aphrodisiac of Nigeria’s
search for democratic progress. The new party’s promises were delivered with so
much certainty and cock-suredness. Those who were promised free meals were
already salivating before casting the first vote.
The permanently opportunistic players in Nigeria’s private
sector could be seen trading across the lines as they have always done.
Everyone knew the PDP had too much internal baggage to deal with. The
opposition exploited this to the fullest and they were helped in no small
measure, not just by the party’s implosion, but also the offensiveness of the
claims by certain elements within the PDP that their party will rule Nigeria
forever. This arrogance had gone down the rank and file resulting in bitter
conflicts among the various big men who dominated the party. The party failed
from within, and even after losing the 2015 elections, it has further failed to
recover from the effects of the factionalism that demystified it and drove it
out of its hegemonic comfort zone. It took the PDP 16 years to get that
hubristic moment. It is taking the APC a much shorter time to get to that same
moment.
The displacement of the PDP gave the impression that
Nigeria’s political space, hitherto dominated by one party, and a half, out of
over 30 political parties with fears of a possible authoritarian one-party
system, had become competitive. But the victory of a new party over a dominant
political party in power such as occurred in 2015, has not delivered the
much-expected positives: instead, questions have been raised about the depth of
democratic change and the quality of Nigeria’s political development. The
disappointment on both scores has been telling.
The ruling APC has not been able to live up to expectations.
In less than two years in power, it has been behaving not like the PDP, but
worse. Not a day passes without a pundit or a party member or a civil society
activist suggesting that the only way forward is the formation of a new
political party. There are over 30 registered political parties in Nigeria; no
one is saying that these political parties should be reorganized and made more
functional; the received opinion is that a new political party would have to
replace the APC.
The implied message is the subject of political science.
Many political parties in Africa, not just in Nigeria, lack substance. They
reflect the problematic nature of party politics in the continent, even after
the third wave of the continent’s democratic experience. Party organizations
are weak, their organs are inchoate, their fortunes are mercurial. In Nigeria,
this seems to be more of a post-military rule reality, for in the First and
Second Republics, some of Nigeria’s political parties appeared to be more
relatively people-based and socially-rooted. The military left behind an
authoritarian streak at the heart of Nigeria’s party politics, producing
political parties since 1999 that do not fully reflect or assimilate the
people’s yearnings.
There isn’t therefore yet in place a mass-based,
people-driven political party to replace the elite-based hegemonic parties we
have, despite early efforts in the past in this direction by the likes of Aminu
Kano and his People’s Redemption Party (PRP), Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s Movement of
the People (MOP), Tunji Braithwaite’s Nigeria Advance Party (NAP), Gani
Fawehinmi’s National Conscience Party (NCP) and Wole Soyinka’s Democratic Front
for the People’s Federation. There was also the Labour Party, mentioned separately
here, advisedly, because it ended up abandoning its social democratic base, and
became like the regular parties, an elite cabal, with the initial progressives
who championed it on the platform of the Nigeria Labour Congress, moving
ideologically to the right in an attempt to align with the Nigerian mainstream
and its ready benefits. A profile of this political party and its initial
principal promoters would reveal just how alimentary Nigerian politics is.
Our immediate concern, however, is to argue that those who
are raising the flag of a new political party as the answer to the emerging
failure of the APC and the growth of factions among its members, and by
extension, the spreading despair in the land, are missing the point. They are
not promising any revolutionary change nor are they interested in deepening
Nigeria’s democratic change. Permit me to quote Danjuma Gambo, of the Enugu
Chapter of the Civil Liberties Organization (CLO) who reportedly said: “A new
political party is what we need. A new party with new plan, (and an) ideology
that will bring succor to the sufferings of Nigerians is the answer.”
Gambo deserves some credit: he phrases the matter delicately
as a commentary on the incumbent dominating political party and government. His
“what we need”, “new plan” “ideology” means change, another form of change to
end, he tells us, “the sufferings (sic) of Nigerians”. We ask him, although he
seems to have answered the question already: what happened to the change that
happened in 2015? So we ask another question: if the formation of a new
political party did not solve Nigeria’s problems since 2015, what is the
guarantee that a new party would gain power and perform better than the ruling
APC? Professional politicians don’t comment on the matter as carefully as Gambo
attempted. They are brazen about it and they have been loud too. They make it
sound like a threat and a given solution. When you hear them boasting that a
new political party is on the way, you are left in no doubt that they are issuing
a threat. But is a new political party the solution to Nigeria’s foreign
exchange crisis or the people’s angst?
The conundrum is easy to resolve. It is easy for the
political elite in Nigeria to change their garments, sans remorse, ideology or
sentiment and that is how some of the most prominent political figures in
Nigeria today have changed party membership cards more than five times in the
last 17 years. The politics of elitism in Nigeria is simply about access to
power, position and privileges. It has nothing to do with the people’s
interests. The APC is in crisis for this reason, very much like the PDP, and
even the smaller parties, because these are political parties of big men of
influence. Conflict results when they are not allowed to exercise that
influence by other competing big men, who are similarly if not equally driven
by ego, religion and superior ethnic considerations.
The exercise of influence as a party big man follows a known
pattern: after electoral victory, the big man wants the spoils of victory; he
wants positions for his followers, contracts for wives and children and the
freedom to have a say in the new government. Any attempt to shut him down,
oppose him, or sideline him or her, immediately creates a crisis within the
party. The greater the number of such big persons who feel short-changed and
marginalized, the greater the chances of such factionalism that would trigger
threats of a new political party. New groups can create new tendencies in
society, but in Nigerian politics, new groups don’t really emerge, it is the
same recycled set moving from one political party to a new or another one,
looking for benefits.
Poverty, low literacy and the weakness of public
institutions make the people vulnerable. The people embrace slogans and the
dividends of what is now known in Nigeria as “stomach infrastructure.” They are
deceived by the politicians’ display of affection and empathy. Because they are
hungry, they accept money to attend rallies to help create an illusion of
populism and acceptability. On election day, they sell their votes and sign off
their freedom. After the election, they are too ashamed to speak up or they
compensate for their psychological distress by subscribing to the politics of
vengeance. A patrimonial and neo-patrimonial political system such as we run in
Nigeria promotes nothing but difference, disappointment and distrust. Those who
are plotting to create a new political party should be told that the harvest is
predictable: more intense leadership competition, high level conflict among big
men, greater deception, increased difference and tension within the polity.
Political parties are governed by rules: the Nigerian political system operates
above rules. It is possibly one of the most Machiavellian in Africa.
What do we need? Not recycled politicians posing as new
party men and women. But this: effective party organizations, like the NCNC,
the NEPU, the NPC, the AG, APGA, UPN, UMBC of old which belonged to the people
and reflected their aspirations. The only difference should be a necessary
disconnect with the politics of ethnicity at the heart of the party formation
process in Africa which, as seen, defeats the objectives of true democracy and
modernization. Institutionalization of the political party system will also ensure
stability within the democratic order: after a bitter political contest in the
United States in 2016, the two dominant political parties – The Republican and
the Democratic have remained stable, and the country is being projected as
supreme.
We should end this then where we started: leadership is the
principal challenge. Until we sort that out, Nigeria’s politics will remain
trapped in the throes of ethnicity, patrimonialism, authoritarian dominance,
the threat of system volatility and fragmentation and the politics of revenge.
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