NEWS: A NEW POLITICAL PARTY IN NIGERIA....... REUBEN ABATTI
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| APC LEADERS |
REUBEN ABATTI, FORMER SPOKESMAN TO IMMEDIATE PAST NIGERIAN PRESIDENT SPEAKS.
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.
CULLED FROM THE SHEET
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