In the light of the crises threatening to take the wind off the sails for the two leading political parties in the country, the governing All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), DARE ADEKANMBI examines the essence of party system in a representative democratic government and the public image of the parties as well as what they are not doing right.
“Parties are an evil inherent in free government, but they do not always have the same character and the same instincts. There are times when nations are tormented by such great ills that the idea of total change in their political constitution comes into their minds. There are other times when the disease is deeper still and the whole social fabric is compromised. That is the time of great revolutions and of great parties” (Emphases, ours).
The characterisation of political parties above was by a notable French diplomat, Alexis de Tocqueville, in his famous book, Democracy in America and quoted in Toyin Falola and Bola Dauda’s book, Decolonising Nigeria (1945-1960): Politics, Power and Personalities published in the United States in 2017.
Although the statement was made in 1851, it was as though the diplomat foresaw the current situation in Nigeria’s political ecology. The country’s two competing parties, the governing All Progressives Congress (APC) and the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), are greatly distressed from internal combustion.
And if the current troubles in the parties are anything to go by, then Tocqueville’s description may be a fitting epitaph on the gravestones of the either or both of them. And possibly from the ashes of whichever of the parties that goes down, a new party may spring. That will be the time foretold in the Tocqueville’s statement thus:”that is the time of great revolutions and of great parties.”
But should the cataclysm not lead to the death of either of the parties, it may probably open the gate for the needed reforms to be carried out by its grandees.
The governing APC and the opposition PDP are being quaked by purely internal conflicts of interests, especially as the conflicts touch the permutations and cutthroat schemings towards the all-important transitional presidential election in 2023.
Unfortunately, the schemings have continued to weaken the already wobbly structures of the country’s democracy so much so that 2023 in itself has started to sound like doomsday.
But how did the parties arrive at their troubled spots or was crisis deliberately programmed into their formation to make them malleable tools in the hands of crafty politicians?
PDP and its war without end
In the week just gone by, the lid was lifted on what has long been observed as bottled up implosion within the PDP. Seven members of the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) threw in the towel, claiming they could not longer work in a toxic environment and calling on the national chairman, Uche Secondus, to resign.
There had been no love lost between Secondus and the NWC members. The Rivers State governor, Nyesom Wike, who literally muscled his way through to have Secondus installed chair of the party, is said to be interested in being a running mate to a northern presidential candidate in 2023. There are strong indications that the PDP will likely field a northern candidate. Leaders of the party feel it will be immoral to pick a southern candidate because the last president of the country from the party came from the South. But there are those who think otherwise. President Muhammadu Buhari, a northerner, will be completing eight years by 2023 and as a result, power should naturally oscillate back to the South.
As part of the 2023 game plan, the guttural voice Wike is open to Secondus, who hails from Rivers, being replaced to stave off any contamination to his aspiration. The governors of the party are also divided along pro- and anti-Secondus line, with only a minority of them supporting the embattled chair.
But Secondus, who is the 15th chairman of the party since its formation on August 4, 1998, has shown more than passing interest in retaining his job after his term expires in December this year. Hence, the continuing tension in the party.
To watchers of the developments in the party, Wike’s visit to former vice president, Atiku Abubakar recently, where they claimed Nigerians are waiting for PDP’s return in 2023, sealed the fate of Secondus. Atiku is still eyeing the presidential ticket and everything is pointing in the direction that a northern presidential candidate is what the umbrella party will come up with.
As the intra-party crisis rages on in PDP, the fortune of the party has suffered terribly with a number of its governors dumping the party for the APC. After the 2019 elections, the fortunes of the opposition had risen with its winning Oyo, Bauchi, Zamfara, Adamawa and Imo states, almost equaling the number of states controlled by the APC.
The feat had brightened the chances of the party for the 2023 until it suffered a plummet. In addition to losing two of the five states it won in 2019, PDP lost Cross River and Ebonyi whose governors, Ben Ayade and David Umahi joined the rival APC, mouthing internal crisis in the party as the reason for leaving.
APC and the transition dilemma
For the ruling party, there is not let up in its internal headache over succession plan. This has further accentuated the fault lines between the two major tendencies in the party, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) led by APC’s national leader, Senator Bola Tinubu and the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) of President Buhari.
To observers, there is a deliberate move by some elements within the party against the former Lagos State governor who is scheming to fly the party’s flag as its presidential candidate. A support group for him has been going round the country to advertise what they call his democratic credentials and show why he is the best man to get the ticket.
A reliable source to Sunday Tribune that the recently concluded revalidation of membership in APC was targeted primarily at ensuring a level playing field in the party. It will be recalled that APC was hurriedly coupled together in 2013 to wrest power from the PDP in the 2015 elections. As a result, Tinubu deployed his political machinery and resources to oversee the registration of members.
Owing to the fear of warehousing the registration documents and other materials in Abuja, the leadership decided to have them in safekeeping with Tinubu in Lagos. Since then, the documents have been in Tinubu’s care. Buhari, in line with his avowal to ensure the party is rebuilt on a proper footing, threw his weight behind the revalidation exercise so that Tinubu will not have undue advantage over other interested presidential aspirants in the party.
Ekiti State governor, Kayode Fayemi, is also rumoured to be interested the nation’s top job should the pendulum be directed to swing in the direction of the South in 2023. As chairman of Govornors Forum, Fayemi is said to be banking on the support of his brother governors as well as the CPC elements that are not favourably disposed to the Tinubu ticket.
The leaders of the party from the South-East are not sitting down, watching the South-West position itself for the ticket. They are also said to be making serious moves to clinch the ticket. In fact, the defection of David Umahi, is aimed at strengthening the chance of the zone, which hitherto had only one APC governor, Hope Uzodinma.
All the scheming from the South is subject to the readiness of President Buhari to allow power to rotate back to the South, since presidential power will have resided in the North for eight years by 2023.
Outside of the APC, the party has been heavily chastised for the manner it has handled the economy six years on, leaving a tale of woes, massive job losses, galloping inflation, poor performance of naira against major international currencies, the damning verdict that made the country the poverty capital of the world, among others.
APC’s image schizophrenia also extends to the worsening security situation with terrorists and bandits holding the country by the jugular. Going by the results of the 2015 presidential election, many Nigerians who preferred Buhari to Dr Goodluck Jonathan did so based on the former’s promise to bring his military background to bear in handling the security situation. But rather than subside, terrorism has festered and spread to other parts of the country hitherto considered a safe haven.
Tinubu, in a statement entitled Becoming the Party We Were Intended to Be, in March this year, admitted that the APC has been unfaithful to its ideals as a progressive party. Speaking against the backdrop of the dissolution of the National Working Committee of the party by the National Executive Committee meeting president over by President Buhari, the former Lagos governor said:
“An honest person must admit the party had entered a space where it had no good reason to be,” though he dismissed those predicting the disintegration of the party and its “imminent demise,” saying such predictions were “premature and mean-spirited.”
“The trouble is not that we would forfeit our collective existence, but whether we were in danger of losing our collective purpose. In some ways, this possibility is of greater concern.
“A political party that has lost sight of the reason for its existence becomes but the vehicle of blind and clashing ambitions. This is not what drove the APC’s creation,” Tinubu said.
The six and half a dozen perception
But is there any difference between APC and PDP? The answer to this question has been eliciting various reactions. But the common denominator is that there is basically no difference between them, except the difference in their names and logos.
A former Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice in Oyo State, Adebayo Ojo, who is a chieftain of the APC, agrees with those who see no difference between the two parties.
“There is no difference between APC and PDP. When some people say they are progressives, I ask them to tell us who among us has not made progress in their life. Surviving the year 2020 is a progress and those who witnessed 2021 are by implications progressives.
“The parties are not based on ideology. There are good people in PDP and there are bad people in APC. Just as saints exist in PDP, there are also saints in APC. Parties are mere platforms to get power, such that if one platform is not available to one politician, he can use another platform. When PDP was not available to Dr Olusegun Mimiko as Ondo governor, he used the Labour Party,” he said.
Chairman of the Advisory Committee that midwifed the 2014 national conference, Senator Femi Okurounmu, has his reservations about the two parties, asking “Have we not seen the performance of APC and PDP since 1999? Can’t we see to where they had led the country and the fate that has befallen the peoples of Nigeria and Nigeria itself? Do you think a leopard can change its spots?
“This is a government by people who no longer seek after the interest and the welfare of the people who voted for them. They are only seeking power for their own selfish interest. When people are seeking power only to make money and accumulate wealth at the expense of the people, when the welfare of the masses no longer concerns them, what does it matter if they keep rotating themselves? How does that improve the welfare of the masses?
“There is no difference between the two. The political persons in power today, whether they are in APC or PDP, are all the same. If you look at the membership of both parties, hardly will you find anyone who has not been in the two parties at one time or the other since 1999.
“They have just been moving from one party to another, looking for where their fortunes will prosper more. So, they are not governing because of you and me or to see to our wellbeing. They are looking for which of the two contraptions called parties will favour them more in terms of their ambition to make money. That is my own opinion.
“Nigeria was not like this in the 60s and 70s. The country has been getting worse and worse. Nigeria was not like this when we had the Action Group and the NCNC and even when we had the UPN, PRP and so on. Nigeria has been getting progressively worse. It has been like a curve that has been going down.
“The Nigerian experience has been from bad to worse. That is why we need a new generation. The young people should not shy away from responsibility. When a country is in the kind of situation that it is at the moment, it takes a new generation of committed youths to change things. We need our youths to rise up now,” he said.
Independent candidacy to the rescue?
To avoid the troubles that are naturally inherent in the major parties, some scholars have canvassed the idea of independent candidature as a way out. They argue this will bring down the huge cost of running for elective office and distraction that parties can become to their candidates.
While some advantages may accrue to independent candidates if they are running as chairmen of local government or councilors or even for state House of Assembly or Federal constituency seats, it will be an uphill task to run for president as an independent candidate for obvious reasons.
First, the constitution will have to be amended to pave the way for such almost impossible task. Sections 221 and 222 of the 1999 Constitution, as amended, clearly stipulate that only those who belong to political parties can seek votes from Nigerians.
“No association, other than a political party, shall canvass for votes for any candidate at any election or contribute to the funds of any political party or to the election expenses of any candidate at an election.
“No association, by whatever name called shall function as a political party unless- the names are addresses of its national officers are registered with INEC,” among other criteria.
Findings by Sunday Tribune revealed that in advanced democracies where the idea of independent candidature has been tested, those who won elections on their own had hitherto contested and won under the banner of established parties. They only broke off from such parties after things went awry. In a place like Canada, for instance, the number of successful independents is very few, making the idea almost utopian.
Raison d’être for political party system
With the two leading parties suffering a huge trust deficit among Nigerians, do we say political parties are of no essence, more so that the French diplomat described them as “an evil inherent in free government?”
There is a flip side to the argument against the desirability of political parties as canvassed by Tocqueville.
Granted, indiscipline has thrown political parties into disarray, making them incapable of playing the expected roles in deepening democratic culture, mobilising the mass of the citizens for national rebirth, progress and development. Yes, the poor turnout of voters at elections is a direct consequence of lack of trust in the parties by the citizens. Voters are largely no longer enamoured of the leading parties, but only see them as necessary evils.
Still, the parties are indispensable institutions necessary for the working of democracy to be possible. Nigeria, like other countries, run a representative democracy where the participation of the majority in a sine qua non. People’s participation is made possible only through the instrumentality of political parties.
A foremost political scientist, E.E. Schattschneider, once said “modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of political parties.” In the same vein, James Bryce said “parties are inevitable. No one has shown how representative government could work without them.”
What roles are they, therefore, expected to play for the good governance and government of the country, apart from merely acting as vehicles to recruit leadership for the administering of the political structures in the country?
The national president, Nigerian Political Science Association, Professor Hassan Saliu, lays out their duties as follows: “They are to serve as point of mobilisation for the citizens. They are also to serve as point of education to the citizens, educating them on how to exercise their political rights and what is expected of them during elections in the country.
“In Nigeria, nobody can become a governor or president without belonging to a political party. So, it is expected that every political party will have its own programme, which you may call agenda setting for the nation. But we do not have that in Nigeria? Political parties are also vehicles, not in the sense of David Mark, for capturing power. Political parties are expected, especially those in the opposition, to always call the attention of the ruling party to issues of huge importance to national security and stability, so that those in power will not sleep off.
“These are key roles of political parties. But if you look at the last presidential election that was conducted in 2019, especially the number of voided and invalid votes, you will discover that the political parties didn’t play their roles well in terms of providing political education to the citizens. If they had done it, the high invalid and void votes that we had wouldn’t have been,” said the University of Ilorin lecturer.
Associate Professor and former Head of History Department, Obafemi Awolowo Univeristy, Ile Ife, Tunji Ogunyemi, while analysing the status of Nigerian political parties, submitted that they are merely associations to promote selfich interests. He based his argument on the recent Supreme Court judgment which accentuated the seeming impunity in the ruling party and the war of attrition in the opposition PDP.
According to him, “Governor Rotimi Akeredolu should have lost at the Supreme Court and the position of the Eyitayo Jegede camp should have been upheld because it is the position of the law. Section 183 of the 1999 Constitution as amended says that the governor of a state shall not, during the period when he holds office, hold any other executive office or paid employment in any capacity whatsoever.
“Impunity seems to have been foisted on the APC as endorsed by President Buhari, who is the leader of the party. He is a nepotistic leader raised to power 10. He has no respect for any law whatsoever in the country. How did you now expect that the vehicle he used in getting the presidency will now be seen as being illegal to him? Buni is an illegal chairman of APC. And the real leader in the eye of the law is Comrade Adams Oshiomhole. He is actually the constitutional chairman of the party.
“PDP itself is confusion raised to power 10. That is the party, a party which failed absolutely within the 16 years of its ruling at the centre. Nothing good came for the economy, except of course the personal intervention and sagacity of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo in getting Nigeria out of the death trap in 2005/2006, together with the assistance of Dr (Mrs) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, one of Nigeria’s finest eggheads.
“They freed Nigeria from indebtedness that Shehu Shagari et all had plunged the country between 1979 and 1983. That achievement itself by Obasanjo is an epochal achievement in Nigeria’s history, particularly our economic history. It came as a result of the respect that the international community has for Obasanjo.
“If Secondus or is it Secondment and others say they are resigning from the PDP and crossing to APC, will you be surprised? Birds of a feather flock together. I can say that the extremely corrupt people are the ones crossing to APC where they will be told “sin no more.” So, let there be crisis in the two parties. I wish them maximum trouble so that the implosion can reveal their hypocrisy and then expunge them from political relevance for other political parties to come to limelight,” he said.
Way out
For Senator Okurounmu, salvation or redemption does not lie in the current political class. “Salvation will come when the young people come together and organise themselves and perhaps form a brand new political party committed to redeeming Nigeria. It is then Nigerians will shout that they have got some saviours.
“You will remember that when people like Awolowo, Azikiwe were ruling the country, they were young men. So, we should not be thinking that only old people in their 70s and 60s can run the country. People in their 30s and 40s can run the country better. They are better educated, better exposed and they have a greater stake in Nigeria.
“The future of Nigeria and in fact the future of their own children depends on them. So, they should organise because they are in the majority. It is very easy for them to win power. All they need is commitment and honesty. If they are honest, determined and patriotic, they can redeem Nigeria.”
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