Interview

Merger of opposition parties will only be effective in Nigeria, if… —Adetula

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1 year ago

Victor Adetula, professor of International Relations and Development Studies at the University of Jos, and most recently the Claude Ake Visiting Professor at the University of Uppsala & Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala University, Sweden, speaks with IMOLEAYO OYEDEYI on the merger of opposition parties recently proposed by former vice-president, Atiku Abubakar, among other issues.

During the week, former vice-president, Atiku Abubakar, called on the opposition parties in the country to form a merger in a bid to wrest power from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), do you think this is achievable when we consider the dynamics and peculiarity of the Nigerian political terrain?

Firstly, let us start with what we know, before analysing what is yet unknown, but we hope to know. Let us look at how opposition parties have fared in the last 23 years since the return to constitutional democracy. You and I know that the opposition over the years has not been effective. In fact, some people have argued that there has been no opposition in the country so far, and that is because what we had since 1999 has been political associations pretending to be opposition parties. Here, I speak across the board. Let us look at when the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was in government, did the APC and others truly serve as effective opposition parties? It is a capital no. So my position has been that since 1999, we have not seen political parties that are well rooted to act as opposition. I do agree that an opposition is very useful for democratic culture to be properly consolidated. But we don’t have political parties that are functioning in that regard. And this takes us back to the question of whether we truly have a functioning political party system in the country. You and I know we don’t.

An extension of this would then be that if we don’t have an effective political party system, how then can we have an efficient opposition? What we have had at various times that appears like the opposition is just organisations among the political elites to capture the power and serve their own interests, rather than oppositions that will be out to serve the purpose of good governance and consolidate democratic culture. And you can see the ease at which key political actors jump from one political party to the other. It is just very easy. In fact, some of the people advocating for the merge have in the past demonstrated the weakness of opposition, because they have not actually been driven by any solid ideology.

How then do you think we can have functioning opposition parties and what then should even be their roles in the system?

We should first talk about how we can have a solid political party system. We don’t have that yet, because these political parties are not grounded in Nigerian society. They are just like aberrations here and there. Let there be light and suddenly, there would be light. They are not political parties that evolve from among the people reflective of the desires and yearnings of the people. Unlike what we have in the First Republic, where you have the peasants, the farmers, and the workers having their interests fully represented in the political parties.

You quite know the history of the Nigerian politics. In fact, if you go back to the local communities, you will hear people talking about AD, Demo, and all. The very elderly people still talk about this. But how many people talk about the political parties nowadays? You only hear their names loudly during campaign and electioneering periods. And this is because the current political parties are not directly linked to the people. Let us look across Africa, where you have political parties; you will find situations of social movements that participated in the liberation struggle consolidating to become political parties. I am not saying that there are not contradictions within those arrangements either. But you see a more serious representation of the aggregate interest of the people because the parties have a history that is associated with the struggle of the people. Which of the political parties in Nigeria now can identify with the struggle of the people? You know all these more than I do because you are in the media and know how they all came on board.

Beyond this, what do you make of the sorry state of our electoral state, which has culminated in the prevailing low level of confidence of Nigerian people in the electoral process?

Well, it is not only in the electoral process of the system, Nigerians have lost confidence and hope in all our public institutions. The confidence has remained very low, unfortunately. With respect to the electoral process, I remember that Justice Muhammed Uwais’ committee observed that the mindset of Nigerians has been very negative with respect to the electoral process and that a lot needs to be done to address this. As such, I believe there is an urgent need to increase the effectiveness of our political and electoral institutions. This is because when you critically examine the Nigerian political system, you will see institutions that are not working very well and the dominant negative political culture of the key players, including the citizens. Unless we address these, we may likely not get it right.

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