Against the background of ongoing defections to the All Progressives Congress by politicians from the so-called opposition parties, we still harbour the fear of a one-party state as an imminent reality. The truth is, what we run is already tantamount to a one-party system, a short historical distance away from the military era, where the head of state, who creates political parties, also hands political parties their respective defining ideologies. The multi-party democratic system, planked as it is on the distinctiveness of ideas and ideologies between parties, and requires the independence of political agents. Contenders must have equal chances to sell their moral vision to the people, contest for power, and maintain their stance even when they have not been voted to power. Also, the institutions must be autonomous enough to regulate the activities of political actors across the board. These are all features that have been seriously lacking in Nigerian politics.
Properly speaking, Nigeria does not even have political parties. What we have are platforms on which any candidate who can commandeer money and influence runs an election. The closest to an ideology that anyone will find in Nigeria’s present political arrangement is the desperation to seize power and, if that fails, to get as close to it as possible. Once upon a time, the PDP called itself the most formidable political party and boasted it would sustain power for the next 60 or even 100 years. They hardly survived one election cycle out of presidential power. Their party members virtually emptied themselves into the winning party even before the 2015 electoral losers had fully understood what had befallen them.
In any case, it does not quite matter which side wins an election because we will ultimately be governed by the same cross-carpeting agents. Our politics mostly lacks a distinguishing philosophy. Take, for instance, the APC. Does anyone have any examples of the progressive causes they have pursued since their founding? I even doubt anyone in the APC ever wonders if they are staying true to their “progressive” appellation. One can say the same for the PDP, whether as the “Peoples Democratic Party” or as “Power to the People.” One of the most laughable comments I read about the Labour Party during the 2023 elections was that it platformed a candidate whose antecedents did not match the “labour” ideology. There was an implicit assumption that the Nigerian “Labour Party” had an ideological affinity with the “Labour Party” of, say, the UK and Australia (which are typically peopled by social democrats) and should therefore act according to character. But there is nothing like that in Nigeria. Whatever name a political party calls itself is, at best, aspirational. It has little to do with what they can be trusted to always stand for. What matters is the control of federal power and mobilising resources for electoral victory.
Our politics has always been more of an aggregation of personalities managing their self-interests rather than an espousal of a governing vision. If you ever watch parliamentary debates in Nigeria, you would have noted that it never happens that lawmakers disagree with their peers based on any philosophy of how government should be structured. They all agree and disagree on the same thing; they collectively sign off the padded national budgets, and like serfs, they jump to their feet to chorus “on your mandate, we shall stand” when Bola Tinubu appears in their hollowed chamber. Without any internal differences, does it truly matter whether we have one party or a dozen?
Besides, the nature of our politics makes no room for abstract ideas. Elections are won or lost based on what they call “structure”, a euphemism for clout cultivated at grassroots levels and which will be sold to the highest bidder during elections. Politics is a pyramid scheme where those who hold sway at different levels exchange the votes of the people over whom they maintain some influence, and their calculations are always based on immediate material gains. The average Nigerian, too, hardly subscribes to a politics of ideas; people vote for personalities representing their identity groups and who they believe will hold power in trust for them. The platform on which such candidates compete hardly matters to our people, and it would seem superfluous for any party to maintain a distinctive ideology.
Perhaps, the biggest reason we never seem to evolve beyond a singularising political order is the nature of our economic system itself. We are largely an extractive economy, a system where the primary function of leadership is to manage and allocate raw resources. It is a political arrangement that makes the president disproportionately powerful since the opportunities for everyone’s social mobility are concentrated in his hands. He distributes to them based on the perceived degree of their fidelity to him. It is not in his personal interest to institutionalise the social instruments of democracy, and he will do everything to ensure opposition parties do not flourish.
If the “opposition” does not allow themselves to be amicably enticed with money and other offers, they will find themselves forcefully crippled. It is not strange that Ifeanyi Okowa, the man who could have become the vice president in 2023, is now crawling on his face to join the APC. He could simply have joined the APC without a fuss, like his peers had done, but he had to add a cringeworthy explanation. For a man who has a N1tn case with the EFCC, who can blame him for being practical? He is not the first person to join the APC to have his sins forgiven, as Adams Oshiomole once enjoined. Godswill Akpabio, the Senate President, too, was once in Okowa’s shoes. He joined the APC, and his case with the EFCC has been put in permanent abeyance. In a country where their president can suspend a governor, how many people will not bow and worship if their survival depends on it?
About the only time since 1999 “opposition” politics thrived in Nigeria was when the regional ACN contended with the national PDP. Now that power has changed hands, we know that the APC was hardly driven by ideological commitment during those years. Their “opposition” politics was funded by ambitious Tinubu with Lagos’ money. Once he got into power, he muted their bought voices. The only state in Nigeria where the “Lagos model” of sponsoring political opposition can replicate itself is Rivers State, and Tinubu has already anticipated that possibility. Not only did he undercut the strength of the PDP in that state by taking over one of their chieftains, Nyesom Wike, but he also showed his hand of power by suspending the substantive governor for six months. The Rivers State Governor, Siminalayi Fubara, who—just months ago—stood defiantly on his two feet, now grovels before the almighty federal power. The reality of being out of power must have hit him.
Such is the disempowering nature of our democracy. It constricts our choices to either being rewarded for compliance or punished with marginality. The average career politician chooses the former for obvious reasons, but also because they are amoral like that. Let me be clear that the fear of a one-party state is a well-founded one. To the best of our ability, we must resist it from becoming fully official because it will further degrade our politics. Yet, we cannot just mourn a politics that we wished we had—rather than the one that is already operative.
Punch
