BENEATH nearly every major political happening in Nigeria in recent times, there seems to be at least one of two motives: whether or not Tinubu will be re-elected President, and if truly there is an opposition left in Nigeria. While the two are technically subsets of the big issue of what democracy has come to mean in the Fourth Republic of Nigeria, they are two different issues. The latter has been a crux, at least incrementally so, since the turn of the century; the former, a recent, much more jolting offshoot of the latter.
Since 1999, the most obvious thing in the Nigerian political space is class politics (which does not exclude elite business leaders), in which politicians skirt around parties, take turns, and recycle old promises; while, on the other hand, there have been Nigerians who go through the circle of grief in a Sisyphean manner. Opposition politics in Nigeria, to the extent at which it has succeeded and otherwise, is to the credit of ordinary Nigerians.
At each point in Nigeria's recent political history when an opposition party appears to win, it is often not because they present a certain, distinct political difference but because they have buy-ins, if only fraternally deceptive, into the mass outcry of the day.
Arguably so, Nigeria's proper opposition party politics ended with the Second Republic. The aborted Third Republic, albeit a military-civilian fracas, laid a dangerous precedence that nearly all succeeding civilian heads or their parties have appropriated since 1999. It is that whoever is in power is the power, and anyone who must have anything to do with power should get in line or lose their political lifeline, if not their life with it.
Different events stand as testaments to the aforesaid; however, the chief of them is the death of Chief MKO Abiola, the widely presumed winner of Nigeria's 1993 presidential election. His death, if nothing else, is the apotheosis of the lengths to which the powers that be in Nigeria could go to pipe political hopes. For over three decades, the election has been regarded as the freest in Nigeria's history. The defeat of hope that the masses have in causing a change with their votes took a major, yet-to-recover-from hit in the electoral cycle.
APC is PDP, and PDP is APC. Parties such as ADC and SDP are not any different.
The only time that Nigeria was again united in the choice of who leads the country was when the late Muhammadu Buhari defeated Goodluck Jonathan in 2015. For Nigerians unborn or too young in the 1990s, the year 2015 was neo-'93, the make or mar year. Opposition politics in that year, in practical terms, was not with the APC; it was with the people, ditto SDP in 1993. At each point in Nigeria's recent political history when an opposition party appears to win, it is often not because they present a certain, distinct political difference but because they have buy-ins, if only fraternally deceptive, into the mass outcry of the day.
In 1993, Nigerians were excited to welcome the promising presidency of MKO Abiola, as a deviation from the military dictatorship that had thwarted the last attempts of the deified fathers of Nigeria's democracy to lead the country. In 2015, Nigerians chose APC not particularly because APC was in effect a better political institution than PDP, but because it succeeded in positioning itself as the centre point of the cries of Nigerians. The truth of similarities in the parties has indeed become more glaring since then.
In 2011, for instance, when President Jonathan removed the fuel subsidy on New Year's Day, the instant protests that greeted the act was rode on by the opposition party. Worse still was the 2014 abduction of Chibok girls, which became the anomaly that footnoted away anything good about Jonathan's administration.
Every voting exercise of Nigerians is a grave mistake, more than the last.
Without the masses, opposition politics in Nigeria does not exist in practical terms, because it is often the people against the political class. Nothing perhaps illustrates this more than the shared attributes of the two ruling parties of Nigeria since 2007 regarding the economy and security in the country. In 2011, when President Jonathan removed the fuel subsidy, the opposition party, led by the current President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, actively weaponized the outrage of Nigerians, but 14 years after, the same policy was instituted by President Tinubu on his first day in office. Insecurity, particularly the rage of Boko Haram terrorism, which became the bane of Jonathan's administration, continues to plague APC-led governments.
Ideologically, APC is PDP, and PDP is APC. Parties such as ADC and SDP are not any different. The one political party that could have been a point of difference is the Labour Party, but LP lost its golden chance in 2023, and it remains a substitute party. Partisanship amongst these groups is first about who gets who, not about how leadership could be provided. From their interviews and manifestos, one could not point to serious ideological differences between Atiku, Obi, or Tinubu. What essentially differentiates them is who each of them (and his fan base) is as a politician, not as a member of an ideologically driven party. They are like bullets, gunpowder, and other metaphorical children of guns—they are one and the same.
Tinubunomics, or whatever you call it, is a politics for-reward-and-or-capacity venture with its own attendant parrots to idolize the stratagem of the City Boy, their cult hero. Akin to image laundering done for President Buhari as a non-corrupt, morally upright leader in the build-up to the 2015 general elections, President Tinubu's leadership promise was spun off the Lagos 'aura' of success, that it was he who began the work in Nigeria's commercial capital, the leading state in the country.
Atikunomics, or whatever you call it, is a politics for-sale-and-birthright, with its horrendous South-North dichotomy. In no way does former VP Atiku differ from Tinubu, except for Atiku's brazen ways of dollarizing primaries, making no figurative declaration of galloping Nigeria into capitalism, and, obviously, his non-Lagos influence (which in 2015 did his presidential ambition in).
Obinomics, or whatever you call it, is a messiah politics that is ridiculed by its own mobsters as a possible grand, mass-enabled 419. Obi's antecedents as a former governor, and what were written about him at the time, largely contradict some of the things he is said to hold the promise of doing as a President. Much of what Obi says is what Atiku says, and what Tinubu says, only in each one's own idiolect. It goes without saying that electing him or any of the other two in 2027 is a choice within the same old order, not political opposites. This is why it seems every voting exercise of Nigerians is a grave mistake, more than the last.
What Nigerians try to vote for, on any good day when the tyranny of poverty and omo wa ni politics do not prevail, is what any electorate in the world votes for—the agency for a better life. Nigerians try to vote to get better economic policies, ones that are not only in massive millions, big billions, and thriving trillions, but in the simple cups of garri and liters of petrol, in the purchasing power of the daily 2k. It is sad, but all that Nigerians have, first and foremost, wanted in the chaotic democracy are basic needs—some light, affordable housing, food, education, in a secure environment. Unfortunately, anger, coercion, and deception have been the major shapers of the political culture in the country's electoral cycles since 1999.
In 2027, unless the real opposition, the suffering masses, chooses differently than the three main candidates on anything other than the reasons for which previous winners won, Tinubu returns to Aso Rock, if on the ballot and alive. The other candidates are only his betas, with dominant features. By their own lack of political consistency, laxity, and devotion to self-pity, they enable the re-election of Tinubu.
The opposition in 2027 will not be because the multi-party system is rooted in Nigeria in varied and usable alternatives. The opposition that will exist, if God wills, is the opposition that succumbs, the opposition of fathers and mothers whose sons and daughters benefited in NELFUND, who are thankful that the country has not yet been incinerated, of people who choose paltry sums as dividends of democracy, of people who choose apathy over participation. The pseudo-opposition will go to court. They will say they are there for the common man because that is where his hope is, but the common man is house-arrested by the hopelessness they inflict on him.
This is a wonderful piece, analytical at best. Indeed Nigeria's political system isn't for the parochial mind. Well-done TAO!
ReplyDelete