President Tinubu, the democratic opposition ecosystem and 2027 general election

I have often lamented the consequences of the bad politics that consecutive Nigerian governments have played with the governance and development structures of the Nigerian state and her people. This politics consists in the framework of neopatrimonial dealings that undermine the potentials that a state possesses to transform the lives and well-being of her citizens. When the political behaviour of the political class manifests a developmental culture and tendencies, it has a very deleterious consequence on the governance and development framework that the state could own and deploy. By the time Nigeria came into the democratic phase in 1999, the expectations for Nigeria and her leadership to do better in terms of good governance had heightened beyond the business-as-usual politics that defined the Nigerian political class up to that juncture.

Democracy comes with its own imperatives in terms of the internal party mechanisms and framework, inter-party relationship and the deliverables expected from democratic governance. The critical point is that democracy demands more than giving attention to elections and electoral dynamics as if political succession encompasses the entirety of what it means to call a state a democracy. In democratic theory, for example, democracy is meant to achieve two crucial transformations. The first is that it is meant to facilitate what we can call the democratic ethos—the transformation in how decisions are taken in fundamental structures and institutions of the state. This includes the internal dynamics of the party system. The second transformation concerns the capacity of democracy to facilitate development.

Here, democracy is meant to aggregate the collective will of the people in terms of sustainable development policies that could be implemented for the purpose of infrastructural development. Democracy therefore encodes the most fundamental essence of the social contract that binds the government and the governed into a relationship of political and governance stewardship. And this stewardship obviates the bad politics that many Nigerian governments have been playing. In order to safeguard the sacredness of that stewardship that the political class owes the people, the democratic framework makes a fundamental allowance for oppositional politics—a framework not only for keeping the feet of the incumbent government on fire, but more crucially for throwing up a range of multiplicity of ideas and policies that could be beneficial for good governance, and ultimately the citizens.

Benjamin Disraeli, former prime minister of the United Kingdom, once noted: “No government can be long secure without a formidable opposition.” This is axiomatic. The opposition in any democratic context is made up of the shadow cabinet, vigilant civil society and the media. Both the shadow cabinet and the media are expected to keep up a querulous but principled interrogation of government accountability, again on behalf of the people. The very lifeline of a democracy is such an opposition and the dissent it introduces that forces the government on its toes for the lifetime of the administration. Indeed, in a satirical moment, Mokokoma Mokhonoana, the South African author, went sarcastic when he said, “The real purpose of the opposition is to minimize the amount of money the ruling party will have stolen from the people at the end of its term.”

One of the tragic points of Nigeria’s democratic experiment is that real oppositional politics died with the First and Second Republics. First, the media in Nigeria has lost its critical and oppositional edge. It has either become captured or silenced or both. Media reportage into government governance policies has become so stilted as to lack any force of principled and objective opposition or ideological sinew. Gone are the days of the West African Pilot and the Nigerian Tribune, and even the New Nigerian, that though partisan in their opposition, still kept up a stream of oppositional reporting that gave the government a run for its money.

Chief Obafemi Awolowo, without any iota of doubt, was the most formidable and ideological of all opposition politicians, and his political party the most oppositional of any political party, in Nigeria. Awolowo gave Nigeria the best of his ideological prospecting for the future of Nigeria, and of democratic governance. His many books, especially Thoughts on the Nigerian Constitution and The People’s Republic, are classic texts of political philosophy that outline fundamental reflections by which the government of the day could proceed to make Nigeria better for Nigerians. When Obafemi Awolowo is referred to as “the best president Nigeria never had,” it was in recognition of his patriotic dedication to the political future of Nigeria, and principled opposition to bad politics.

Nigeria’s Fourth Republic has been struggling to achieve a potent political machinery that situates the opposition as a strong, coherent and ideologically sound mechanism for orienting democratic governance. With the Tinubu administration, the situation has worsened in the worst possible ways. This is because what parades itself as the “opposition” has remained fragmented, self-serving, disarticulated, and therefore lacking a coherent organising framework. To say the least, the opposition lacks an organised, and hence formidable, structure and ideological blueprint for pushing the Tinubu administration to the limit of democratic dissent.

Let us first explore the many malaises of oppositional politics in Nigerian democratic governance before spotlighting the consequence for the Tinubu administration and Nigeria’s democratic experiment. First, the lack of coherent ideological basis for pushing democratic dissent is so glaring as to render the concept of “opposition” meaningless and rather unfortunate. Any incumbent government in the United Kingdom already has waiting a shadow cabinet that raises the critical torch to every policy statement and activities of the administration on strictly ideological basis. Every penny spent is scrutinised; every foreign policy statement is weighed in the balance. The void left by any significant ideological manifestation in Nigeria makes it possible for all sorts of strange bedfellows to sleep together in unholy dalliance. A longstanding member of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) or the Labour Party (LP) can wake up one day, lose the primary, and waltz comfortably into the All Progressives Congress (APC).

The second critical issue is that the opposition, as a democratic necessity, lacks a critical constitutional standing. And this is crucial because without the constitutional backing for structure and funding, the opposition—whatever its energy—is bereft of a formidable standing that will keep it consistently in business. There is an inherent unfairness in a system that makes the full extent of state resources available to the incumbent government while the supposed opposition is left in financial limbo, or meant to service the oppositional imperative through personal funds.

The third malaise of oppositional politics in Nigeria is first the lack of internal democratic mechanism that allows political opinions, and even internal dissents to be articulated and aggregated. This makes it all too possible and very easy for political elites and vested interests to hijack the party machinery for selfish ends. On the other hand, there is a crucial disconnect between political parties and the grassroots. Parties only make a significant appearance during elections and then subsequently go quiet afterwards. This turns electioneering campaigns into profound acts of pretensions. And neglecting the grassroots, the most significant signifier of democratic politics, only grounds the terrible fixation with elections as the core of democracy.

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How has this configured the Tinubu administration and Nigeria’s democratic governance? One, the inchoate “opposition” has left Tinubu’s enigmatic persona as a political strategist and a pragmatist as intact as it could be. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has remained adept at running circles round his major challengers in the PDP, the LP and other oppositional figures. Even the newly formed African Democratic Congress (ADC) has not fully taken off or stepped into the opposition chamber due to a fragmented cacophony of voices carried high on the personal ambitions of those who wanted to be oppositional. Almost all non-APC politicians have been deserting their own parties in droves as a result of pragmatic need to align with the party in power, and buy into the enigma of the president.

Two, this situation has fundamentally left the Tinubu administration’s governance and development policies bereft of a clear and ideological challenge, even if the opposition is already partisan. When the ADC is unable to bury the personal interests of its gladiators under the need to challenge the incumbent government and its policy architecture, it becomes near impossible for the new party to articulate any blueprint within a fragmented political environment. This situation is very important, and rather sad, because it leaves Nigeria’s democratic governance the poorer for the absence of genuine governance blueprint that speaks sincerely to a vision for the future of Nigeria and Nigerians. Opposition in this context, for all it opposes, is still part of the all hands that must be on deck in ways that cumulate into a collective political effort between the government, media and opposition parties to keep pushing the ideational boundaries of governance forward. If then the opposition is fragmented, or has buried its significance under the weight of personal political ambition, then Nigeria is lost.

This state of oppositional politics in Nigeria is to be lamented, rather than seen as a smooth highway to electoral victory. Indeed, it brings the forthcoming general elections in 2027 into sharper focus, and makes oppositional politics a critical item for electoral reform. An unfortunate dimension of what is currently named as “opposition” is its anti-Tinubu agenda which is focused solely on discrediting and dislocating him. This is unfortunate because the anti-incumbent clamour has made the “opposition” wilfully and disingenuously deny even the most glaring of Tinubu’s achievements. And what is even most appalling is that the stringent noise to send the Tinubu administration packing is all the more strange in the absence of a coherent blueprint that could replace what is currently on the governance and development tables.

The most critical and strategic reform move, ahead and beyond 2027, is to institutionalise oppositional politics by integrating its presence and functional capacity into the 1999 Constitution. In other words, the machineries of opposition must be constitutionally grounded in ways that will enable its utility. This must also be complemented by providing a stringent legal enablement for internal party democracy that mandates political parties to design ideological manifestos that speak to fundamental challenges of the Nigerian federation. On another level, the Electoral Act also requires constant rehabilitation that will make it constantly alive to current and future challenges. A good example is how political parties must be frog-marched into a grassroots mode that challenges local governance and participatory democracy through the party’s engagement with the very people they want to exercise political power over.

The lack of a disciplined, ideological and coherent oppositional framework in the current political dispensation might have handed the Tinubu administration its next four years in office. But this is not a good point to make for Nigeria’s democratic experiment or democratic governance whose vitality must be constantly nourished by a present and proactive opposition that is willing to sacrifice personal ego and ambition on the altar of civic patriotism.

•Olaopa is the Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission, Abuja, and Professor of Public Administration.