Mamora renders account to constituency
Tuesday, June 29, 2004.
2007: How
ready are the opposition parties?
By Chukwudi Nweje
The existence of credible opposing parties is an
important factor in a democracy. This is because apart from keeping the ruling
party on its feet, the opposing party is also there to serve as an alternative
should the electorate get dissatisfied with the policies of the ruling party.
Thus, the phrase ‘government-in-waiting or shadow cabinet’ in the
parliamentary system.
In this regard, the opposing party should be strong,
united and very much ready to proffer an alternative suggestion to unpopular
government policies.
In Nigeria, it is regrettable that the opposition
appears to be in perpetual slumber as the ruling party carries on with its
polices with little or no challenge.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has since the
return to civilian rule in 1999 dominated the political landscape of the
country while the parties that are supposed to be in opposition have not made
anymeaningful impact on the
scheme of things.
With the PDP controlling almost two thirds majority
of the National Assembly and winning majority positions in both the 1999 and
2003 elections, political watchers have continued to wonder whetherany of the other political parties
could truly be called an opposing party.
As the countdown to 2007 approaches, observers have
continued to wonder if the other political parities - All Peoples Party (ANPP),
Alliance for Democracy (AD), All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA), among
others, would turn the table or whether the PDP would continue to be lord in
the political arena.
With the PDP increasing its number of elected
officials each passing day, the fear that the opposition might be extinct by
2007 is growing.
Only recently at the just concluded seminar for the
newly elected PDP local government chairmen, President Olusegun Obasanjo had
thundered that his party would rule Nigeria for 30 uninterrupted years.
According to him, the PDP is the only party that can ensure peace, unity and
respect for the rule of law, and that keeping it in power would enhance the
continuity of democracy. He also said he was ready to give his life to achieve
this.
“I believe PDP will rule this country for the
next 30 years in the first instance. I will work for it and I am ready to die
if need be. I know we have a party that can guarantee peace, unity and
progress, maintain the rule of law and make Nigeria one of the strongest
nations in Africa and the world. God forbids that we disappoint ourselves, the
nation and the world” Obasanjo said.
Obasanjo’s words must not be taken as an empty
threat. In a country where politicians see elective office as a chance to
better their lives, this portends the extinction of the opposition and a tilt
towards one party state considering the craze with which politicians decamp to
the PDP.
Perhaps the PDP would make good Obsanjo’s
words. The voice of the opposition has remained but a whisper, not to mention
the fact that Nigerian politics has been largely played without ideology.
As far back as the Babangida transition programme
when Nigerians were presented with two parties identical in every way except
for their names, political party formation has been under military supervision,
lacking ideology.
The present crop of parties are no exception. When in
1999 Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar was to had over to a civilian government, three
parties - Peoples Democratic Party, All Peoples party and Alliance for
Democracy were on the ground. The PDP has since remained a colossus in the
presence of the other parties. This is the root cause of the fear being
expressed by political watchers.
There is no gain saying that neither the ANPP nor the
AD has been able to match the strength of the PDP, not in 1999 and not today.
Perhaps it might happen tomorrow. The weakness of both the ANPP, then APP and
AD started to manifest in their formative days.
The ANPP beat the deadline set by the Independent
National Electoral Commission on the formation of political parties but it was
still dwarfed by the PDP in terms of membership spread. The AD on its part
scaled the hurdle narrowly and some argued that it was the gesture of the
military junta to compensate the South West over June 12, 1993 election crisis
that led to its registration.
The
seemingly inferiority complex felt by both ANPP and AD led to both parties
going into a pact prior to the 1999 elections in order to beat the PDP. This
did not happen. Since then, ANPP and AD have been in the shadows.
It has been argued that a strong opposition has not
emerged because of the lack of ideology in Nigeria politics. Arguing in this
line, Mr. Olumide Makinde, a constitutional lawyer and political analyst, says
that it is the ethnic factor that has continued to becloud the AD.
His words: “ Remember that AD went into a pact
with ANPP in 1999 to stop Obasanjo and PDP from winning the presidential
election. And again in 2003, the same AD supported Obasanjo because they wanted
the presidency to remain in the South West.
“Remember that in 1999, the AD, a South
West-based party, was still protesting the annulment of June 12 and by 2003,
they decided that there was no need to support a fight between two
brothers.”
Makinde is not alone in his view. Mr. Odia Ofeimum, a
one-time personal secretary to the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, accused the
AD/Afenifere group of betraying Awolowo by supporting Obasanjo at the 2003
elections. Ofeimum, who took this stand during the 2002 annual report of the
Committee on the Defence of Human Rights, said the AD / Afenifere group
confused ethnic solidarity with party ideological position. The PDP capitalised
on this confusion to infiltrate and take over the governorship of the South
West states hitherto controlled by AD.
In 1999, AD and ANPP had teamed up to fight the PDP
at the presidential elections, a move which to some extent sowed the seed of
disintegration in the two parties.
In the AD, this was the beginning of what was to
become ‘the hand of the AD but the voice of Afenifere. Although the
alliance with ANPP is said to have been the idea of Chief Bola Ige who believed
he would win the joint presidential ticket of AD and Alhaji Umaru
Shinkafi’s NPP. It was Chief Olu Falae who was to stand as the
presidential candidate of the alliance after a group of “23 wise
men” decided against Ige as the AD flag bearer.
On the other hand in ANPP, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu who was
forced to give up his presidential ticket for the ANPP/AD joint venture left
the party with his supporters to join the PDP and since then it has been a
decampment galore of stalwarts of the opposing parties to the PDP.
The AD’s support for Obasanjo in 2003 did not
again do it any good. Rather, the result was that PDP won the governorship
election in five out of the six South West states where AD had prided a safe
haven.
Although it is generally argued that the pact with
PDP in 2003 was on security at the polls, it was common knowledge that the AD
governor campaigned for an Obasanjo re-election even before the pact. In fact,
the Lagos State Governor, Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu, promised Obasanjo three
million Lagos votes for his re-election at the 80th birthday celebrations of
Afenifere leader, Pa. Abraham Adesanya at Ijebu Igbo.
But the major problem in the AD has been
factionalisation and Afenifere is again not far away from blame. Prior to the
2003 elections, the Lagos State chapter of the party was in turmoil. The
Progressive Action Congress (PAC) had to break away to form a rival political
party while at the national level, two national chairmen — Ambassador
Mamman Yusuf and Alhaji Ahmed Abdulkadir struggled for recognition.
While the parties position for 2007, the AD is again
in crisis. The holding of two parallel conventions in 2003 produced former
Governor Bisi Akande and Senator Mojisoluwa Akinfenwa as chairmen at
conventions held in Lagos and Abuja respectively.
INEC which interestingly opposed to what happened
prior to 2003 elections when it recognised one of the then factions, had the
time to shut the door against both Akande and Akinfenwa, arguing that it was
not represented at either convention.
The ANPP though without visible factions has its own
problems to tackle. The 2003 presidential primaries of the party dealt it a
fatal below. The impact is still there today.
Like the swing of a magician’s wand, the party
hierarchy suddenly decided to stand Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari as its candidate
at the elections forcing other contenders like Chief Rochas Okorocha, Chief
John Nwodo, Chief Edwin Umezuoke, Chief Perry Ajuwa and Chief Harry Akande to
walk out of the convention with Okorocha saying that “it is unfortunate
that our party founded on the premise of justice can no longer see justice, can
no longer have fairness and can no longer have equity …”. Okorocha
had since left the party to take a special adviser to the president position in
the PDP government
Although the ANPP struggles to play the role of the
opposition with Gen. Buhari still challenging Obasanjo’s re-election, he
has been doing so almost alone as most party chieftains have busied themselves
with other matters.
In fact, ANPP governors Attahiru Bafarawa, Adamu
Aliero and Modu Ali Sheriff were among the first to congratulate Obasanjo on
his re-election even while Buhari contested the election results. They however,
still maintain they are with him but disagree on his call far mass action.
No doubt the opposing parties have not lived up to
expectation, and in a National Assembly where the PDP out-numbers the
opposition parties put together, party loyalty would not make PDP suffer any
form of suffocation from the opposition.
With the recent calls from Obasanjo for the
deregistration of parties that did not make an impressive effort at the last
polls, parties like Green Party, Justice Party, National Conscience Party,
among others, may be barred from the 2007 polls.
Ifthe
PDP should pursue this through an Act of the National Assembly, there is no
doubt that if the members abide by the principle of party loyalty these parties
may say good bye to the political playground. And the outcome would not be
far-fetched as there will be mass decamping to the PDP. If the words of Senate
President Adolphous Wabara that “membership of the National Assembly is
an investment …” which must be recouped are true, then political
jobbers must strive to remain relevant.
Already, declaration of interest,
counter-declarations and in some cases denials by those considered heavy
weights have left the opposition, wooing and backing these heavy weights in the
hope it would brighten their fortune. The AD is again divided on the issue of
who to support between Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Gen. Ibrahim Babangida,
forcing the Oyo State chapter of the party to ban any form of campaign for
either Atiku or Babangida. From the foregoing, it is clear that the opposition
has learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. ‘Cheat me once, shame on you,
cheat me twice, shame on me’ goes the saying. Both the AD and ANPP have
been cheated once. 2007 would reveal how well each has learnt its lesson and
which would suffer the ultimate shame.
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