Akin Osuntokun, Managing Director of the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, and former senatorial aspirant of the Alliance for Democracy, AD, explains why the party fell apart. He uses Ekiti State as a case study.
On the morning of Saturday 12th April 2003, just before the commencement of voting, it rained through the length and breath of South-Western Nigeria. In the months, weeks and days leading to the general elections of 2003 there had been apprehensions on the recurrence of general breakdown of law and order as an attendant feature of civilian to civilian transition programmes in Nigeria. Early morning rains are traditionally somewhat conceived as portentous of good omen. In the specific context of the morning of 12th April 2003 and the apprehensions preceding it, the downpour could be interpreted as portentous of an ‘all is well with the event of the day’ omen. Evocative of the significance of the event was the television footage of President Olusegun Obasanjo braving the rain to cast his vote at an Owu-Abeokuta polling booth. And the day turned out to be well indeed – validating the good augury.
Peace, tranquillity and orderliness became the dominant strain while violence, thuggery and volatility constituted the recessive strain. In order to better comprehend the assured manner of the prevalence and dominance of the former over the later, let us recall that the party in entrenched control (the Alliance for Democracy, AD) of power in the six South-West States had been nearly wholly defeated at the elections in all of the States except Lagos. This fundamental disruption of the political Status quo unaccompanied by violent eruptions was a double-check on the authenticity and affirmation of the peaceful nature of the elections. The electorate which had expressed its will were neither shocked nor outraged by the outcome of the elections as determined by their vote. Going back to rain predicated metaphysical perspective, I venture to suggest that a generalised downpour could also signify the washing away of an old order and its replacement by a new one.
I am going to situate the displacement of the AD by the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in some departure points of inquiry.
One is that contrary to popular belief, the phenomenon of one party totalitarian dominance has not always been characteristic of the South-West. Prior to the second republic, the Action Group, AG and the National Council of Nigerian Citizens, NCNC (later the Nigerian National Democratic Party, NNDP) were rivals in the real sense and meaning of competitive rivalry. The AG barely managed to get the better of NCNC and was indeed defeated by the latter in the 1956 elections to the Federal House of Representatives.
The regional introversion into one party dominance was provoked by the chain of events generated by the 1962 AG factional crisis. The crisis rapidly snowballed into the camp betrayal theme of Yoruba history, a kind of a historical re-enactment of the ill started Yoruba emperor whose lieutenant’s (Afonja) misadventure with the Fulanis resulted in the loss of llorin and spawned political implosion within the expansive Oyo Empire. This recreation, coupled with the biased political intervention of the Tafewa Balewa led federal government in the factional crisis, the imprisonment of the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the rigged Western regional elections of 1965 attained a tragic climax in the January 15, 1966 coup where the much demonised Chief S. L Akintola was killed among other victims.
The tragic turn of events was interpreted as a vindication of sorts for Awolowo and the increasingly Yoruba nationalist posture he had assumed. This was the background to the unrivalled monolithic return of the Unity Party of Nigeria, UPN, in the South-Western States in 1979 and marked the introduction of the one party dominance phenomenon in the South-West. The unhappy political experience of the South-West which ensued from the annulment of the June 12 1993 Presidential elections (won by the late Chief Moshood Abiola) and which lasted through the Abacha military dictatorship naturally had the effect of alienating the Yoruba from the Nigerian state and provoked another spell of a collective retreat into a regional cocoon. Again this was a background that found expression in the dominant bloc victory of the AD in the 1999 elections in the South West.
The counteraction of the predisposition of the South West towards the bloc adoption of the AD started with the compensatory and pacificatory gesture of conceding the Nigerian Presidency to the South West– made manifest in the emergence of Chiefs Olusegun Obasanjo and Olu Falae as the only Presidential candidates in the 1999 Presidential election. In the intervening years between 1979 and 1999, UPN propaganda had successfully demonised Obasanjo as the architect of Awolowo’s misfortune at the 1979 Presidential elections and by extension misrepresented him as a self hating Yoruba who plays the proxy for Northern hegemonic dominance of Nigerian politics. To any objective and discerning observer of Obasanjo’s Presidency, it became obvious that the mould in which he had been cast by the Awolowo partisans was misleading and uncharitable. He had proven himself to be a fair minded, even handed and equitable Nigerian President. The South West public gradually recognised that he does not conform to the negative stereotype that had been peddled of him. With this realization also began the crumbling of the walls of prejudice, suspicion and hostility against him and the political party he had come to personify in the South-West. To this political reorientation was also added the incentive of intensive patronage blandishments like choice appointments and priority attention by the federal government.
To the foregoing must now be added the sundry internal contradictions with which AD/Afenifere was riven. ‘Being fraught with acute internal contradictions – arising from the circumstances of their origin, it was inevitable and predictable that all the parties were headed for instability and crisis’)... ‘The AD, like the other parties, was first and foremost an emergency contrivance for disengaging the military from governance. Secondly, majority of the active party members were people who had participated in one form or another, in the preceeding Abacha transition programme. Thirdly and arising from the second point, membership of the AD was largely dictated by the pragmatic motivation of seeking political office in a realistic manner rather than principles and ideological conviction’.
Further, there was the inability to define and accept what constitutes the correct and proper relation between the Afenifere and the AD. The Afenifere proved not too capable of resolving its own identity which it made contingent on its relationship with the AD. Should the Afenifere be defined as separable from AD? This is a question that has not been resolved and which exacted a severe toll on both entities. The contradiction is such that there are political factionaries in political parties other than the AD whom the custodians of Afenifere will consider as belonging to the fold more than many members of AD and vice versa. I have argued elsewhere that it is quite possible that there are more genuine and core Afenifere partisans outside than inside AD. And that the equalization of AD and Afenifere has resulted in a situation whereby the contemporary Afenifere is mainly peopled by nominal and disinterested members...
The thesis that the inseparability of Afenifere and AD is consistent with the Awolowo legacy and tradition is flawed to the extent that there is really no continuum from the AG and UPN to the AD. In other words, the AD is neither rooted nor derived from the UPN and the AG tradition. Unlike what obtains in the AD, Awolowo was the founder, chairman (or leader) and the Presidential candidate of the AG and the UPN. Awolowo was not the leader of the faction or South-Western caucus of those parties but the de facto and dejure leader. There was never any ambiguity about the origin of the parties, what they stood for and where the locus of power resides. Awolowo was the standard bearer of the parties and the entire membership took a cue from him. At any rate, the issue of whether Afenifere was AG or UPN never arose because those parties were never presented as off-shoots of a pan Yoruba political group called Afenifere–which would have offended the sensibilities of non Yoruba?
The severest test to which the Afenifere/AD nexus was put and from which it never really recovered was the Afenifere Presidential primaries conducted in lbadan to choose the Presidential candidate of the AD (between Chief Bola lge and Chief Olu Falae.) The dynamics of the crisis that emanated from the primaries manifested in the relentless embattlement of both organizations. The choice of Falae over Ige who was the deputy leader of Afenifere inevitably ruptured organizational comradeship between the later and his colleagues on the Afenifere hierarchy. Wherein ensued a supremacist struggle between the Afenifere leader Senator Abraham Adesanya and his offended strong and charismatic deputy Chief Bola lge.
In terms of its ability to regenerate itself as an intimidating political fighting machine, the death of Chief Bola lge was perhaps the final nail on the coffin of the AD. The fact that lge was never really reconciled with his colleagues on the Afenifere hierarchy further deepened the disillusion of the follower-ship and the general public with the party it was promoting.
The young man who became the governor of Ekiti State on the platform of the AD in 1999, Otunba Niyi Adebayo would have been amused to be identified as a member of Afenifere (and its affiliated party) three months to his election as governor in 1999.
Literally speaking, the gap between Adebayo (who was the frontline governorship aspirant of the Abacha catspaw political party the UNCP and membership of Afenifere was akin to the rapport between Senator Abraham Adesanya and the late General Sani Abacha. It was a contradiction in terms for the AD (widely perceived and projected as NADECO party) to have featured a personality of such pedigree as an elected governor. And in this unfortunate aberration, Ekiti State was the exception to the rule of Lagos, Ondo, Oyo, Ogun and Osun States where tested and proven progressives like Ahmed Bola Tinubu, Adebayo Adefarati, Lam Adesina, Segun Osoba and indefatigable Bisi Akande emerged as governors.
The story of the materialization of this political fluke is not now really more important than what its beneficiary did with his governorship prize (Afterall people reinvent themselves and in a manner of speaking become ‘born again’) Ekiti is the only state that President Olusegun Obasanjo has not paid a state visit since he assumed office in 1999. The occasion of a Presidential State visit afford the host state a unique opportunity to showcase (taking advantage of the attendant maximum media exposure) its land-mark achievements. Ekiti State has the dubious distinction of being the only state that failed to take advantage of this opportunity. I raised the issue with the President, and he said the governor did not invite him on the excuse that there was no Presidential lodge where he could stay.
The President retorted that he could conveniently and comfortably lodge at any of his personal friend’s house in Ekiti including those of Ayo Ogunlade and Afe Babalola. The truth, of course, was that the young governor had nothing to show. If he had achieved anything at all it was to invest the meagre resources of the state in the dubious purchase and building of properties in Lagos and Abuja. The question can be asked – where is the logic in employing extremely limited resources (Ekiti state is the poorest state in the federation) in inflated purchase of properties, infrastructural decay and acute backwardness in almost every aspect of human development index ?
The situation was so bad that it took the personal intervention, even if politically inspired, of his political opponent to minimally address a basic and simple human need like water supply in the state capital Ado Ekiti and some other towns. The reliance of the inhabitants of a state capital on the efforts of a private individual for the provision of water is most certainly a special way to highlight the failure of government. I am sure that one stereotype that many of you are familiar with about Ekiti State is a well deserved reputation for academic excellence.
Indeed, it is appropriately christened the ‘fountain of knowledge & yet under the incumbency of the former governor – who prides himself as leaving a legacy of achievement in the field of education (in the ‘aggressive pursuit of free education), Ekiti state consistently and amazingly had the worst result at secondary school leaving certificate examination. I mean the state was second to none from the rear. I have discriminately dwelt on Ekiti state for some reasons. One is that it exemplified the inadequacies and contradictions of AD in the governance of the South-West. Second is that it is my state and I am better familiar with the politics and governance of the state than any other in the South West. Third is that it was the only state (again in the South West) where a member of my generation was given the opportunity to prove himself at the highest level of government. And he made a hash of it.
On a final note I will like to respond very briefly and indirectly to the vogue of attributing the victory of the PDP to “massive rigging”. I quote the head of the European Commission to Nigeria, Ambassador Leoni dos Tezapsidis as follows “ The European Union observer mission on the 2003 elections in Nigeria was independent. It freely gave its opinion, based on serious work. Once the observers had reported, the EU took this as a valuable opinion in making a judgement on the elections, and how to react to them. This judgement has been a balanced one. The EU has congratulated President Obasanjo on his re-election, since there is no suggestion that the abuses that occurred in some states (not in the South West) put that re-election in doubt.”
