And Finally a Knocked Engine?
By
Only on few cases have analysts and political forecasters been proved so wrong. Those who witnessed only a little over two years ago, how the ruling People's Democratic Party, PDP, mauled the patchy combination of the rival All Peoples' Party (APP) and the Alliance for Democracy (AD) did not waste time concluding that a peculiar kind of multi-party system had arrived the Nigerian political scene. The predominant fear in the country was that with such a monstrously intimidating political party like the PDP, sucking the lifeblood out of the other parties, we might find ourselves driving down the road to a one-party state. These fears were well founded. But perhaps, it is part of the reality of our politics that political calculations hardly ever add up to any logic here.
The PDP housed some of the most experienced and ruthlessly astute politicians that could be found on this side of the Sahara. PDP was strong, complex and
comprehensive. It was one huge political plasticine that would conveniently fit into every ideological persuasion in the books. Party men call it the
biggest in Africa and some boasted that the PDP was destined to rule Nigeria forever.
However, even in those heady days, a chieftain of the closer rival, the APP, Alhaji Umaru Shinkafi, took a long look at the group and did not see a
political party. What he saw was a big machine designed to gather votes and nothing more. Shinkafi might have been a bit uncharitable, or as a losing
rival, even disgruntled. However, those who could still bend low to see the party's underbelly knew that Shinkafi was only saying what even honest PDP men
knew all along, but feared to admit or to expose. But now that PDP appeared to have caught the political equivalent of the HIV, for how long would it be
able to deny or hide this fatal affliction? Perhaps, if the vote-gathering machine was still functioning well, no one would have as much bothered.
Afterall, how many politician in the country today could see the role of a political party beyond that breadth? However, like Chief Bola Ige once said,
the engine has since knocked. And what everyone is concerned with now is to have his own slice of the scrap to see if it would be worth anything in the
black market.
Nevertheless, in the face of the grim internal combustion that had gone on in the PDP, the two other parties, APP and AD are too far down the dark alley
to seize any ground. While the ruling party is dying of overheating, the AD and APP are knocked to death by cold. Effectively locked out of the big bash
going on in Abuja, and with the likelihood of the next elections offering any respite so thin, the men in either party soon began to jostle for the little
warmth available. And because this space is so small, everyone began to match on everyone's toes. As at today, not even INEC can tell for certain, who the
chairman of the AD is. As for APP, almost all the big men in the party's Board have become political warlords, carving out their own fiefdoms and everyone
going his way.
I am not sure anyone had any illusion that what we had running in 1999 were platforms for any serious democratic nurturing. But I doubt too, if anyone
envisaged that the cookies would come crumbling so soon. But here we are. Running a democracy without political parties. Everyone is busy sewing his own
jersey. From the local governments to the states, through the national assembly to the Presidency, it is every man to himself.
So much has been said about the ideological vacuity of the parties. A political party, we insist, has to stand for something, must have an ideological
anchor, otherwise it would only run rudderless. And that is what we are seeing now. No direction. All the parties are going in the same and opposite
direction. Even those who only two years ago, mounted the moral skyscraper terrorising everyone, did not require much prompting to come crashing headlong
into the confusion. Power is very sweet and everyone wants to be part of the big deal. And that is why some of these people would still be fighting so
hard to reserve a seat for themselves in the sinking Titanic, just because the sweet music is still wafting through from the dying band. And those who
could not be accommodated must go and create their own rackets, where they would easily play the king in their own small hell, rather than be servants in
someone else's heaven.
However, even under normal circumstances, people should be allowed to form parties. This is a constitutional right. But these are not normal times. And
the more reason, new parties must emerge. But at this level, it goes beyond the mere right to associate. New parties have to be driven by a sense of
history. A sense of what has gone wrong and must be corrected. A sense of what we did not have the time to do the last time but have to get right this
time. This is the only way we can hope to pull this enterprise through.
November 2001