Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, the first Africa-owned, U.S-based newspaper published on the Internet
Dr. Chidi Amuta is Executivee Editor of USAfrica – since 1993
I have fallen victim to two sets of phone calls in recent weeks about political developments in Nigeria. Between foreign friends and associates on one hand and my local elite readers and friends on the other. The foreigners have uniformly expressed consternation at recent political developments in Nigeria.
They just cannot understand the peculiarities of our political culture. How come an opposition platform is just being cobbled together barely six months to a general election? How come the major opposition leaders are the same politicians who have featured with the characters now in power in the ruling APC? How come politicians have waited for the judiciary to tell them who should lead the new opposition party? Why do Nigerian politicians change their parties literally like underpants ever so often?
On the other hand, calls from fellow Nigerian elite have been somewhat different. They are not surprised about the series of decampments and avalanche of new parties on demand. In Nigerian politics, political parties are just like the local mini bus, Danfo. They are just means of transporting political animals to their desired destination. It is inbuilt in Nigeria’s political culture. We form new parties, discard old ones, jump from one party to the other at different times of the day. No ideals. No ideologies. Just trends and likely winners. We are mostly devotees of political icons and oracles. We follow our favourite candidates wherever they go in the partisan super market. Whoever the people feel is likely to win automatically has our support. It does not matter what the party stands for or for how long it has been in existence. A party can spring to life in three months and still sweep a state, local government and cause sleepless nights at the national level. No one here in their right senses will express surprise at the last minute tinkering with opposition parties.
From either side, none has queried the names or nomenclature of the many opposition parties. Nigerians are infinitely creative when it comes to naming things. No one has asked what the new salvation army parties stand for. We are not an ideological people. No one has even asked how the new opposition platforms differ from the ruling APC. Our politicians come from a common ancestry. They are all bound by the blood of betrayal, conspiracy, cross-carpeting, deceit of the masses and deployment of stolen money.
Yesterday it was some strange creature called the ADC. People registered massively into the ADC. Even federal legislators defected into the ADC before pausing to hear what the Supreme Court would rule on whether the party had a legal leadership or not and the plight of its registration as a party. After the Supreme Court verdict validating the new party’s leadership, the anti-ADC public jubilated. At last, some party was coming to free us from the Tinubu hegemony. The Tinubu people panicked a bit. Their illusion of a virtual one party dominated general election was fractured.
The defections, migrations and exodus into the ADC continued for a while. In the aftermath of the Supreme Court verdict, the purported preferred opposition party played host to a deluge of political migrants. As it were, the political landscape quickly split into two camps: the APC/Tinubu tribe versus those whose only identification mark is that they are “NOT” Tinubu and APC. A ruling party and a fledgling grand opposition party!
But just as Nigerians were getting used to this new bipolar landscape, the Nigerian political animal birthed an even stranger offspring. Peter Obi and Rabiu Kwakwanso, two significant opposition leaders abandoned the ADC and joined a new party, the NDC- the Nigerian Democratic Congress- previously mostly identified with one man-Senator Seriake Dickson- former Bayelsa Governor. Literally, Dickson’s Danfo was ready to convey Peter Obi and Kwakwanso to the “new Jerusalem”.
Yet another ripple has occurred in the political pool. Literally overnight, the previously solid followership of the ADC as the main opposition platform has literally caved in. Most non-APC politicians have begun yet another mass migration to the NDC, abandoning the ADC. Only a few days ago, 17 federal legislators defected to the NDC in one day. Mass membership registrations into the NDC have been reported all over the country.
The initial conspiracy rumours began during the opposition leaders summit held in Ibadan earlier. The public perception was that the leaders had agreed to present a consensus candidate for the presidential ticket. That sounded un-Nigerian given the towering ambitions on display. It later turned out that despite every effort made to discourage one of the leaders to back down from the race, he insisted on proceeding. Later, unconfirmed reports filtered out that the man had made specific demands as conditions for stepping down. An initial understanding to hold direct primaries to choose a presidential candidate became uncomfortable for Mr. Atiku the moment he sensed that Peter Obi had reached an understanding to collaborate with Kwakwanso on a joint ticket. Atiku now wanted a consensual endorsement of his candidature. This did not go down well with the rest.
On their part, both Peter Obi and Kwakwanso are said to have insisted that candidates for the party’s ticket should have their own organic followership and movements in order to drive membership. So, Ibadan ended with a future of discord and a clear indication that the ADC was dead from inception.
From the developments so far, certain tentative deductions have become apparent.
First, Nigerian political followership is not necessarily ideological. It is like the rest of our social value system driven by personalities. Nigerians believe in personages, individuals whom they believe embody certain ideas and ideals. Somehow, the current political opposition temperament in Nigeria seems to be driven by the popularity of Mr. Peter Obi and his left -of- centre ideas. His messaging is about a new politics for a new nation. He is about a more transparent governance based on leadership that is accountable, visionary, competent, nationalistic and committed. He has carried this message forward from his 2023 campaign. He has found a political marriage with former Kano state governor Rabiu Kwakwanso very convenient.
Both men share a certain massive popular followership. Kwakwanso has his Kwakwansiya movement which has expanded into a virtual pan -northern popular movement with teeming followership. On his part, Peter Obi has had the Obidient Movement as a massive popular movement with membership that cuts across ethnic, religious and regional divides. The elite and the urban working class are comfortable with the Obidient values as coinciding with the ideals that could make Nigeria great. It is this combination that is the driving force of the possibility of a viable opposition in the current Nigerian political atmosphere.
Obi and Kwakwanso therefore represent the immense demographic possibility of the popular masses in Nigeria. It is this fear that seems to frighten the old political establishment including President Tinubu’s political behemoth, the APC. It is the heart and soul of the real political opposition at the present time. And this is why with the exit of Obi and Kwankwanso, the opposition potential of the ADC has largely been deflated.
What is left of the opposition threat of the ADC is the shadow presided over by Mr. Atiku Abubakar. Mr. Atiku who turns 80 in November totally misread the political compass of the nation. The convention of north-south rotation of the presidency is not a fiction. It is the basis of stability in a nation that is predominantly Southern Christian and Northern Muslim.
In the current setting, Mr. Tinubu, a southern Muslim is in power. The only political competition he can face can only be from a southern politician. In other words, political contest every eight years in the context of the rotational north-south convention can only be localized within the same geo-strategic region. Atiku’s current presidential ambition is a blatant violation of this convention.
Secondly, given his current age (80 in November), Atiku is outside the tolerable age perimeter of those who lead the current opposition pressure. Beyond that, he has been too much a part of the partisan yo -yo of the recent politics to be taken seriously. Atiku has made too many political somersaults, changed parties too frequently and therefore perspectives and convictions ever so often to be held responsible for any perceivable slant on Nigeria’s problems. Ordinarily, the ideal direction for Atiku Abubakar at this moment in time is towards a merited retirement. It is hard to exonerate Atiku from the collapse that awaits the ADC proposition as an opposition platform.
In his statement justifying his exit from the ADC coalition, Peter Obi pointed at the purported infiltration of the ADC by the forces of the APC-led Nigerian state. Since then, various versions of the grand conspiracy to stop Obi and Kwakwanso have emerged.
One devious version is that the ADC may have been an arrangement between President Tinubu and Mr. Atiku to help the latter recover financially after the heavy toll his finances took under Buhari who literally was bent on impoverishing Atiku. This mischievous conspiracy theory goes on to insist that Atiku’s mission in the 2027 election season is merely to help Tinubu demolish Peter Obi’s threat by whittling down his vote count and giving Tinubu a much clearer win than in 2023.
The conspiracy theory indicates that Tinubu may have already promised Atiku certain ‘lucrative’ portfolios in his second term administration in addition to a handsome upfront down payment. This may well be a wild conspiracy theory with no factual basis. But for whatever it may be worth, the scheme and Atiku’s own presidential ambition would seem to have landed short of its runway.
The ADC as a party may still survive as a shell like the other many useless parties in the INEC register. But as a credible and frightening opposition platform, its hour has passed. It will not just disappear. It will go ahead to field inconsequential candidates with manifesto that appears to differ from Tinubu’s lack -lustre agenda. But it has lost its originating appeal and potential. In Nigerian politics, a party platform is as good as the names behind it and their political gravity. Without Obi and Kwakwanso, the ADC is dead on arrival as an opposition platform.
Public response to the migration of Peter Obi and Rabiu Kwakwanso has therefore been predictable. The duo were the life blood of the ADC and the opposition on account of their popular followership. Many have blamed Obi for this latest switch of party after he earlier left the Labour Party. Some have even seen Obi’s party migrations as indications of excessive ambition and an unwillingness to be a team player. That is a defective reading.
Obi has grown into an undeniable leadership stature in the country. His vast followership cannot see him in any role less than that of a presidential candidate. Therefore, it would be political suicide for Obi to join any party that would offer him anything less than a presidential ticket. The ADC as conceived was likely to humiliate him into a lesser role. It is therefore heroic of Obi to see the danger ahead and quit as and when he did.
In politics as in real life, heroism is not walking head on into an oncoming train. Nor is political bravery measured by walking blindly into a destructive trap set by vicious adversaries. On the other hand, the wise politician is the wily fellow who avoids all snares, traps, evil schemes of his adversaries and survives politically to advance his ambition and prosecute his vision to his desired victory point. Even if he does not win the race, let it be said that he led the charge in front of those who see him as leader.
The majority of those who have been castigating Obi for quitting the ADC are partisans who were waiting to deny Obi the party’s presidential ticket in order to douse his popularity and extinguish him politically. But the man had the foresight to fly over the cuckoo’s nest. With the exit of Obi and Kwakwanso, the fire is out of the ADC’s projected opposition train.
Interestingly, there has been little or no word against Mr. Atiku Abubakar whose lifelong presidential ambition has wrecked nearly every party that hosted him. Similarly, there has hardly been any condemnation of the antics of President Tinubu and the ruling party who have invested heavily in destabilizing and destroying rival political parties. This in itself is a direct destructive assault on multi party democracy.
Since the recent upheaval in the political opposition landscape, a rash of conspiracy theories have invaded the air. The social media and beer parlor channels have taken over political intelligence. In his statement justifying his migration to the NDC, Peter Obi hinted that the ADC coalition had already been infiltrated by the virus of old Nigerian politics. In other words, the ADC had been invaded by agents of the incumbent administration.
Beer parlor informants who are ready to swear by all unlicensed deities further have it that Mr. Atiku has no interest in the 2027 presidential election beyond his personal financial rehabilitation. No one can confirm or deny this unkind theory.
Another conspiracy theory is that a wing in the ill fated ADC is out to humiliate both Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar by denying both the presidential ticket of the party. This faction, led by opposition figures from the South West, are said to be bank- rolled by the incumbent administration with a limitless budget. The strategy is to make 2027 a South West versus South West contest with a view to making President Tinubu the consensus candidate. Under this scheme, both Governor Makinde and Rauf Aregbesola are to choose running mates from the North for full effect. Whichever of them wins the ADC ticket will face Tinubu in something akin to Olu Falae versus Olusegun Obasanjo (1999) contest!
Nigeria’s presidential election is a grand casino. Whoever wins the election will get to occupy the most powerful political office in Africa. It is an unlimited license to incredible power, influence and cash. In pursuit of that office, no conspiracy is too far- fetched. In fact, political conspiracy is in itself a virile lucrative sector of the Nigerian political industry. We are right in the midst of the conspiracy season in Nigeria’s unusual political culture.
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