It is sad and unbelievable that after 22 years of unbroken democratic rule, most Nigerian political parties are still in great disarray. Unfortunately, the dominant parties such as All Progressives Congress (APC), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) are overtly embroiled in one crisis or the other due to personal ego, greed and uncontrollable quest for power. The parallel congresses of the ruling APC and the resignation of seven key officers of the opposition PDP are all veritable signs that all is not well with our polity. All the grandstanding and drama in the parties can be traced to the 2023 election season and who gets what and not necessarily what they will do for Nigerians.
After 22 years of civilian rule, our politicians, whether born-again or not, have really learnt nothing and forgotten nothing about the age-long tenets of democracy. They still see politics from the prism of rat race, where survival of the fittest maxim reigns supreme. In the political chess game everything is fair and they think of everything but patriotism. We have indeed passed through this road before, full of confusion, deceit and uncertainty but somehow managed to wriggle out of it with some physical and emotional scars to show for it.
We really don’t need a soothsayer to tell us that our current set of politicians seem to be bereft of political ideology and they don’t know why they are in politics in the first place. Some if not most of them are in politics for self-serving reasons. They are there to massage their egos, acquire enough material wealth, enough to last many generations unborn. They are in politics because of power, prestige and the glamour of office. Their penchant for honour and bogus titles exemplify their epicurean philosophy.
To them, the welfare and security of the citizens, the main function of government, is never in their agenda. They don’t care if the roads are motorable or not. They don’t care if the taps are running. Do they know if the health facilities are functioning optimally? Do they care about the school system? They don’t even think about the poor and how to salvage the country from the self-inflicted poverty trap. They mouth sweet slogans of patriotism and national unity and do little to ensure their fulfillment. Some of them tacitly work against the national unity they preach with their nepotistic policies and appointments.
What they say outside or in public is quite different from what they say and do inside or within their closets. Like Janus, they have two faces. In public, they present a likeable visage and image of a servant-leader, a messiah and a man of the people or what my Igbo people will call omelora. But in private, they present their real image, the ruthless vampire, dictator and oppressor. What they tell Nigerians outside is different from what they tell members of their family, coterie of praise singers, ethnic group and religious camp. Put in another way, how they treat Nigerians is different from how they treat their family, close friends and sycophants.
Since independence, Nigeria has had the misfortune of having inept and uninspiring leaders. Nigerians have had to grapple with leaders not fired by creative imagination. They lack leaders with emotional intelligence and patriotic zeal. And from one political epoch to another, it is like from one tragic tale to another. The paradox of Nigerian leadership challenge is that the new ones are worse than the past ones. That is why we have not made any meaningful progress in political leadership. The tragedy of the nation is that we keep recycling the same bad leaders as if we lack credible leadership materials.
With less than two years to the next election season, all the major political parties are in crises of indescribable proportions. Most of them have lost their bearings and there is no hope that things will ever get better as we approach the 2023 polls. One noticeable flaw of our current political dispensation is the seeming lack of credible opposition. The PDP, which should have provided the needed opposition, has gone to sleep since ever losing election in 2015 to the quickly assembled strange bedfellows called the APC. With so much defection of its members to the loquacious APC, the PDP has lost its voice and can be said to be in tatters. Its umbrella has remained perforated and unsteady that it can no longer provide shade for its disenchanted members who troop to the centre for crumbs that fall from the master’s table. Even the APC broom is not as united as before.
The APC broom has lost its shine, firmness and sweeping ability. The APGA is only trying to keep afloat in Anambra and a few other states. Nigeria at present is not a good example of how to practise multiparty democracy. Our democratic journey so far has not shown any remarkable improvement. We are even degenerating. The nation’s democratic institutions beginning with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the judiciary, the security agencies are so weak to weed the system of charlatans and pretenders. They are so weak to defend our fragile democracy.
The situation has become so bad that even our founding fathers such as Zik, Awo, and Bello won’t be happy with what has become of our politicians and even the poor political development of the country. They will surely regret the lack of equity, patriotism and national unity among the present crop of political leaders and politicians. They will definitely cringe at the neglect of agriculture and education as well as the bastardization of our diversity and the politicization of our security agencies and other things that make us Nigerians.
Our founding fathers will decry our low pace of development, our becoming the world poverty capital and one of the most corrupt and terrorized nations in the world. Undoubtedly, they will lament our poor funding of education, health, power, sports, agriculture and whatever. They will decry abduction of schoolchildren, students and other Nigerians, including old people and traditional rulers by bandits and terrorists.
The crises rocking the main political parties now can be traced to absence of internal democracy and the hegemony of godfathers. The ongoing rift in the parties has nothing to do with the welfare of Nigerians or to advance the development of the country. It is only in Nigeria that one politician will boast of having the party structure in his palms and without him nothing will happen in the party. It is only here that one politician can dictate who gets the party’s ticket during elections.
It is only in Nigeria that the party in power in a sate wins all the council seats in a local government election and all the seats in a state assembly poll. And we tolerate such aberration. How then can we define electoral fraud? How do we determine that the system is not working? As an opposition party, the PDP has been docile and impotent. It has allowed the APC to get away with its impunity and dictatorial tendencies. The PDP is not checking and shaking the APC the way it should. Instead of people leaving APC for PDP, the reverse is the case. What an absurdity? With the APC and PDP being in disarray, the road to 2023 is not promising and enticing enough. It is not even exciting. Even the other marginal parties do not offer hope.
The third force option is neither here nor there. For our democracy to endure, we have to go back to the basics and get our act right. In terms of multiparty democracy, we have missed the road. We need parties with clearly defined ideologies and philosophies as we had in the first and second republics. We need patriotic politicians and not the self-serving lot parading the polity. Without sounding sanctimonious, there is need to incorporate truth and morality in our politics. That is the only anti-dote to the self-serving dictatorial and nepotistic leadership in the country.