News Analysis: Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, the first Africa-owned, US-based newspaper published on the Internet.
Dr. Chidi Amuta is Executive Editor of USAfrica, since 1993
The political army has gradually worked the nation into an election preparation frenzy. You can hear it, feel it and smell it in the very air we breathe. A banker friend jokingly told me the other day that some politically exposed customers are beginning to seek huge loans and offering “victory in view” in the 2027 elections as “collateral”for such humongous loans! For most sensible people, the question of the moment has become a big existential puzzle: Will there still be life after 2027?
The ruling APC and the incumbent political rabble are reinforcing their ranks to give Mr. Tinubu and most of their ruling ambassadors assurance that they will retain their positions, be re -elected or be reappointed. The beat needs to go one while the gravy train rolls on. Most of all, Mr. Tinubu’s re-election for a second term is the primary prize at stake. In a predictable groundswell, political office holders ranging from governors to assembly men and political foot soldiers have been trooping to the ruling APC in what can best be described as the greatest national political migration in our political history. It is a migration that defies the direction of political movements from bad parties to promising ones. Most ordinarily sensible Nigerians are trooping en masse into a party that has ruined the nation in the last 11 years.
In preparation for what promises to be a massive electoral haul in our national political history, the APC is fast transforming into a political war machine. So, at zonal, state, local government and ward structures are being put in place by the ruling party all over the country.
No one can fault the structural foundations currently being put in place by the APC. A party that is used to political power grab needs to be prepared in structural terms.This is the most elementary requirement of a political party that is serious about retaining power. Politics is about people. People in Nigeria live in wards, local governments and they aggregate in states that define themselves in the recognized geopolitical zones of the country. In fairness, the APC is organizing for the forthcoming elections in practical terms.
In a multi- party democracy, the credible alternative to a ruling party, good or bad, is a viable and credible opposition party or coalition of parties. By its nature, an opposition party or coalition platform cannot expect to unseat a ruling party if it is in any way less organized, less thorough and less hard working than the party it is out to defeat at the next election. But it must be noted that an opposition political party or platform cannot be reduced to a barrage of targeted insults directed at the incumbent government in the social media. It is not a series of sporadic and staccato statements condemning isolated policies and very every body movements of the agents of the incumbent government. A political opposition is also not a mere expression of intent to form an opposition party. In today’s Nigeria, no one is scared of such empty threats not backed by political sagacity or cash troves.
Nor does a credible and viable opposition party derive life and credibility from uncoordinated condemnations of current policies. It does not matter how loud the patrons of an intended opposition party shout from the roof top of their mansions lamenting current national affairs. On the contrary, an opposition party properly defined must offer the public and electorate a credible intelligent alternative to the current reality. It must present an intelligent alternative template for governance which the elite and general public can see and test as a tool of better governance.
Barely one year to the 2027 general elections, the only opposition to Tinubu’s APC hegemony remains a wild speculation, a viral rumour and a series of knee jerk movements. Yes, there have been conspiratorial caucuses and meetings. There have been names dropped of all manner of political gladiators who are all aspiring to snatch the keys of Aso Villa from Mr. Tinubu and his wife. A presumed opposition party- the African Democratic Congress (ADC)- has been floated and registered. Beyond that acronym, little else is known yet.
All manner of patrons are mushrooming all over the place as kingpins of the new opposition party. We do not yet know the party executives. We do not know the zonal, state, local government or ward leaders of the proposed party. All we hear are names of APC failed graduates, PDP rejects, APC refuseniks and Tinubu’s former allies who fell out of favour or could not find lucrative positions in the incumbent gravy train.
The so-called ADC is still a parade of names of political strange bedfellows, politicians who share only one attribute: they happen not to be Bola Ahmed Tinubu or his crawling disciples. The major names being trolled include Peter Obi, Atiku Abubakar, Rotimi Amaechi, Nasir El Rufai, Rabiu Kwakwanso, David Mark etc. These names are united by something else: each of them wants to be President because he thinks he is better than Bola Tinubu.
If there is a primary to select the presidential candidate, each of them will throw in his hat into the ring because they each know why the next person cannot carry the party flag. Everybody is better than everybody else. Nigeria is a bad place because none of the ADC potential presidents has been chaperoned into the Villa.
Each of them sees himself as the best president Nigeria has never had. Worse still, each of the ADC front runners and would- be contestants is ready to dangle and brandish some advantageous ethnic, geopolitical, religious or other advantage which he wants to dazzle the public with. What we have in the offing is an “opposition party of many presidents” with none ready to step down for the others. A leader who cannot accept the leadership of others is a rebel in disguise, a trouble maker and habitual rabble rouser.
Buhari’s coalition that gave birth to the APC worked because there was an ab initio understanding among all the coalition partners that Mr. Buhari and his political faction was the lead mascot. There was no opposition to Buhari in reality. When in Kenya a coalition of parties was put together to oust Arap Moi’s Kenya African Union, the leading parties had an understanding that the opposition would be led to power by Mwai Kibaki.
In the ADC on the other hand, none of the front runners is coming with a party platform of his own. There is no core organic party from which the ADC is emerging. Mr. Obi is more of a political nomad, coming with a notional followership of his Obidients and social media youth squad only, having recently quit his Labour Party, in itself wracked by legal and structural instability. Atiku is virtually a political destitute in terms of party heritage, having lost his foothold in a tattered PDP, courtesy of Tinubu’s wrecking ball emissary Nyesom Wike. Atiku cannot claim any registered party as his. And no party is ready to stake any ownership of Atiku and his political baggage. The man is now a roving political mascot and potential spoiler of good causes.
Ordinarily, an opposition party should embody an obvious alternative viewpoint that contrasts with or contradicts the core ideas on which the ruling party has either run or ruined the country. One has been listening to the noises coming from the major trumpeters of the ADC for anything that faintly suggests either an ideological divergence or an alternative viewpoint. There is not even a consistent argument or sensible standpoint. In respectable democracies, an opposition party should minimally canvass an alternative viewpoint on most policy issues. In the Second Republic, Chief Awolowo’s Unity Party of Nigeria articulated an alternative to the programmes of the ruling NPN. Shagari and rhe NPN posited qualitative education while the UPN advocated education for all, leading to the so-called Jakanda Schools that extended the benefits of education to as many children as possible.
Minimally, we expect the fledgling opposition to Tinubu’s draconian APC to have articulated by now an agenda that replaces today’s high cost, high tax anti people reform with a more compassionate agenda that would offer relief to the masses of suffering Nigerians. In response to the flamboyant annual budgets of the Tinubu administration, Nigerians expect the ADC to have articulated its own alternative budgets (with figures) that would achieve a more frugal management of resources to deliver less waste and more benefits in education, poverty reduction and healthcare for the people. Instead, all we hear from leading opposition figures are the familiar abuses, destructive criticism and disruptive conduct and rhetoric.
The emerging opposition platform in today’s Nigeria has one major political asset in its amoury. The vast majority of Nigerians are disenchanted with Tinubu and the APC. The president has performed abysmally on all fronts. He lacks the personal electricity and charisma to carry the weight of this oversize office. Many also argue that he does not have the knowledge base, administrative sagacity and eloquence to attract and retain popular attention and followership. His pre-Aso Rock resume sounds like a phone book of infamy that have made him an object of dislike by the majority of Nigerians. Above all, he has unleashed on Nigerians an avalanche of anti people policies that have reduced most average Nigerians into walking corpses.
Yet, Tinubu’s monolithic iron grip on the machinery of the APC should in this scenario confer a bullet proof advantage on Tinubu and the APC towards victory in 2027. I thought so until his current state visit to Turkey. Tinubu tripped and fell hopelessly down at the reception event in Turkey. Even after he was helped up, the president had to be propped up by his host and appeared rather unwieldy and visibly weak and unwell. Of course, Tinubu has a right to trip and fall and still rise. He even has a right to be ill like all humans. But to carry obvious infirmity into a hectic campaign season may devalue the strength of the APC’s prime ticket. Worse still, Donald Trump’s campaign against victimization of Christians in Nigeria may compel Tinubu to seek a Christian Vice President who may not have the political gravitas of a Shettima. In effect, the APC may have an incumbency advantage over the fledgling opposition but the strength of the Tinubu ticket may be eroded by his crippling infirmity, generally cranky health and his many sectarian and geo ethnic troubles. As a candidate for re-election, Tinubu is eminently unsuitable and unelectable for a second term both on grounds of his bad personal antecedents and his abysmal performance on the job.
But there remains a lingering very Nigerian fear surrounding Tinubu’s hold on presidential power. More than his prospective opponents or indeed any other political factions in the country, Tinubu has access to an abundance what every politics needs: MONEY.
On the other hand, the opposition leadership slate is riddled with conflicting ambitions, peer group rivalry and a vastly divided demographics. While most of the leading opposition figures may be able to slug it out in a fair contest, Mr. Atiku Abubakar has a disruptive presence. He has aged out of the pack. He evokes the sectarian and ethno-regional echoes of a receding past era. His statesmanship credentials would be best served if he steps back and plays guardian to the ADC leadership scramble. If he insists on running, he might end up diminishing the chances of the coalition and unconsciously serving the goals of Mr. Tinubu. Nigerians are hungry for a leadership that can free the nation from the vice grip of old politics and incompetent power grabbers and imperial overlords.
But between the two camps, the public may search in vain for leadership material that transcends the trouble with Nigeria. The Presidential contest in 2027 may in fact be altered by repositioning the contest as one between the opposition with its popular support versus what Tinubu and the APC have in abundance: a CASH armada.
In that case, the grand wager of the 2027 presidential contest would be: What wins between people’s power as popular consensus and the power of money as a factor in democratic enablement?
