Nigeria’s political landscape never ceases to astonish and amaze. In addition to our habitually surprising electoral outcomes, our politicians are dramatists of immense creativity. They have an uncanny ability to literally convert things into their opposities and still retain public attention and ignite curiosity and sustain interest. They have just as a group staged a successful mass psychological coup against the electorate. Nearly all our normal political expectations have been altered.
Barely two years into the tenure of the Tinubu presidency, the politicians have dramatically altered the nation’s political agenda and expectations. First, instead of holding themselves to account on the unfulfilled promises of the 2023 elections, the politicians have positioned the 2027 election as the central political concern of the moment. Forget the hunger, the unemployment, the rampaging inflation and the epidemic of insecurity and daily deaths in droves. The exchange rate of the Naira is not as important as who gets to appoint the next CBN Governor. Face 2027 and the prospect of a Tinubu second term.
Secondly, the politicians have positioned the prospect of an opposition coalition political grouping as the biggest political challenge in the horizon. Ignore the many incompetent ministers and corrupt officials of the incumbent administration. The problem of the moment is the collective of Atiku Abubakar, El-Rufai, Peter Obi, Kayode Fayemi, Dati-Ahmed, Rotimi Amaechi etc. In the perspective of the incumbent administration, these political gadflies are the ‘enemies’ of the moment. In their own right, the coalition opposition elements are complicit in diverting attention from the current challenges and focusing instead on the 2027 contest and their own chances of toppling Tinubu and the APC.
Thirdly, the opposition political figures are being driven to a wall where they just have to struggle for dear life. Their parties are on fire with internal contradictions and subversive plots sponsored by the ruling party. So, they have to strive to save their individual political lives in addition to salvaging the remnants of their embattled parties.
In addition, the politicians, especially the one in the ruling APC, want us to start juggling as to which parties stand a better chance of ousting Mr. Tinubu and his gang from Aso Villa. A faction of them have already declared Mr. Tinubu re-elected! In this regard, they have invented a new political pastime which we better call serial ‘party slaughter”. The object is to ‘kill’ as many of the opposing parties that have electoral prospects as possible. In this regard, the APC has converted the embattled Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) into a virtual political killing field of sorts. The casualties are piling up by the day.
Mr. Wike and his fellow war mongers in the employ of the ruling APC are compiling the casualty figures and reporting back to headquarters where the generalisimo is nodding in satisfaction. A smaller squad of trouble makers in the ruling APC is engaged with the Labour Party and the possibility of an SDP gathering point for the prospective opposition coalition.
But by far the greatest political drama and diversion of the moment is the increasing gale of defections and decampments from opposition parties, especially the PDP, to the ruling APC. It is like a season of mass migrations from all parties to the ruling party.
A jungle metaphor is the most apt at this moment. A forest of larger wild creature swallowing and chewing up smaller ones best describes recent happenings in Nigeria’s political space. In a gale of defections and decampments, major politicians from other parties have been trooping into the ruling APC in a series of decampments that are best described as insane.
In just one day, the migration took a quantum leap.
The Delta State governor Sheriff Oborovweiri and his immediate predecessor both announced a dramatic decampment to the APC from the PDP. This particular defection is multiply significant. A siutting governor elelcted on the platform of a rival prt changes his platform midway through his tenure. Similarly, a former governor who was the vice presidential candidate of the major opposition party also defected to the ruling party that he had opposed only in the last election. More importantly, these two defections came along with the defection of all the chairmen of local governments in the state which is considered a strategic state from point of view of national resources.
In addition, it is rumoured that Kwakwanso and the governor of Kano state are set to decamp to the APC from NNPP.
Similarly, Kano North Senator Kawu has decamped from the NNPP to the APC. In the same vein, Labour Party Senator Imasuen of Edo State is said to be getting set to decamp from the LP to the APC. News reports from across the country indicate that a total of 216 PDP and NNPP members in Jigawa state have decamped to the APC. From the South west, House of Representatives member Oluwole Oke has also decamped from PDP to the APC.
Once the trend has been activated, the likelihood that it would continue is clear and present. It is a trend that has been intensified by the weaponization of poverty and hardship by the policies of the Tinubu government. Most Nigerians have been driven to a solid wall of want and hardship. The perception is prevalent that only those who join the ruling party stand a chance of surviving the pervasive hardship. Forget about party ideology and beliefs. This is the hour of crass survival.
Ordinarily, it is an implicit assumption of democracy that individuals are free to change their beliefs and party affiliations subject to the relevant rules. The right and liberty to freely associate or change affiliation is a democratic right. We can question an unusual velocity of exodus of partisans in any direction within the party spectrum. We can also raise larger issues that touch on the general trend of membership in the nation’s political party architecture.
For instance, there is something that is quite troubling in the recent wave of migrations and decampments into the APC. At a time when the state of the nation is sorry and sordid, it is inconceivable that political leaders and notable citizens should be trooping into the very party that is squarely responsible for running the nation aground. There is a consensus among most ordinary honest Nigerians that the APC government under Mr. Tinubu has been an unmitigated disaster.
Ordinarily, when parties are in power, they strive to a record of governance and performance that would at least make them a tolerable option in the next election. A bad party is usually punished by a denial of the mandate in the next election. A party that scores so abysmally in all areas of governance and whose leadership has the worst job approval rating in recent history has no business canvassing for increased membership let alone attracting an obvious drove of new members. In fact, such a party should be avoided like a plague so that it does not infect the electorate with a contagion of negativity.
What we are witnessing is therefore an obvious reversal of normal political expectation and behavior. This trend is of course a reaffirmation of the transactional essence of Nigerian politics. For most Nigerians, the political party is a machinery for the distribution of resources through pork and patronage. People want to be part of where the power is and where the patronage is being dispensed and shared. In the run up to the 2027 race, therefore, politicians are jockeying for vantage positions in the political party they consider the most viable electoral platform.
If this trend continues, we are heading for a situation in which the majority of active politicians will converge in the APC as a virtual “one party” republic. The most obvious target of the migrations is of course the PDP, the erstwhile major opposition party. The party has in recent times been the venue of the destabilization machinations of the Tinubu political machinery headed by Mr. Wike, Minister of the FCT who apparently has a mandate to destabilized and cannibalize the major opposition party to the advantage of the APC.
The gale of migrations into the APC ordinarily make the task of an opposition coalition much easier and a more attractive proposition for the next twoyears. The exits define the enemy. The rate of departures delineates the line and rules of engagement in the looming 2027 confrontation. Depending on the strategic acuity of the opposition coalition, a fat ugly APC would be the easiest political balloon to deflate. It culd also become a behemoth that is all pervasive and difficult to overwhelm.
The current massing in the APC also hints at the possible ideological outlines of the 2027confrontation. The APC will carry on as a signpost “progressive” party. But its new membership and configuration make it anything but progressive in essence and outlook. It poses a challenge for the coalition of real progressives that have been rumored to be working towards a new party. From the names that have been touted as leaders of the new coalition – El-Rufai, Amaechi, Fayemi, Obi, – a real progressive social democratic movement seems to be in the offing. That is the desirable direction that is required to brand the APC in its right coloration as a decadent and corrupt ultra reactionary collection of conservative rejects. A party that hoists Tinubu, Akpabio, Ganduje, Umahi and Matawalle as its mascots surely knows where it belongs on the scale of credible political gatherings.
Irrespective of the parties from which the politicians are migrating from, they are all members of the same party. Their backgrounds are the same. Their outlook on issues are the same. Their interests are the same. Their orientations are the same.
The opposition parties are mostly torn by crises and instability. In that process, they are reinforcing the notion that our system has no credible opposition. The so-called opposition parties lack internal integrity or self -defining identities to justify their independent existence in a multiparty democracy. In this atmosphere, only the APC wears the appearance of cohesiveness.
Even then, the present cohesive appearance of the APC owes only to one factor: it is the party in power and has the monopoly of control of power ,patronage and pork. Outside that circumstantial exigency, the APC is as splintered as the rest. It is even more incoherent than the others in terms of ideas and a track record of governance and definable legacy.
Effectively, then, we are in a practical one party situation. There is the ruling party and literally no opposition parties properly defined. Intrinsically, there is no difference between all the major parties in contention in our democracy. There are no ideological or value differences among our parties. They are all acronyms, colourful flags and emblems with little intrinsic ideological meaning. They may have different acronyms but a united by a common blood stream of prodigal values.
Our parties are populated by the same caliber of Nigerian politicians drawn from a uniform national elite pool of unemployed college graduates, failed “charge and bail” lawyers, unsuccessful venturers and other jobless middle aged hustlers, etc. This is why it is ever so easy for people to migrate from one party to the other with ease. No ideology. No core beliefs. No values. No commitment to any form of service to the people. No vision for the nation. Mostly a keen eye for financial returns wherever it may be found. Nigeria has earned a distinction of being the only country in which an individual can have breakfast in one party and end up with dinner in a totally different party without any qualms.
Going by the present trend, the ruling APC could swallow up most of the membership of the other parties and suffer no indigestion. But whether most Nigerians can inhabit the same political household up to the 2027 election is a huge uncertainty. For the APC to retain power in 2027 if Nigeria remains in this desperate disrepair, it will require more than a drove of “follow follow” membership. For the ruling party to lose power, an opposition coalition must meet the broad majority of Nigerians in the places where they feel the pain most.
