From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
The All Progressives Congress (APC) recently rolled out the drums to celebrate their two years in power, but for the major opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and other opposition parties, they seem to be nothing to celebrate.
There are appear to be consensus of opinion that the opposition has failed in checkmating the ruling APC.
Former governor of Kaduna State, Balarabe Musa said the opposition has performed abysmally in the last two years. According to him, it was not only the opposition political parties that have failed, other democratic institutions like the Labour movement and student unions have equally failed. He attributed the state of things in the country to the failure of the opposition. The former governor said if the opposition was up and doing, the federal government would have been more alive to its responsibilities.
According to the former governor, “the opposition has not performed in the country because they have not done what the opposition is supposed to do in a democracy. They are not doing it. If they are doing it, the government would not have carried on the way it is.
“When I say opposition, I am not talking about only political parties. I mean the NLC, NUJ, and student unions; they are not doing what they are supposed to be doing. This is not how it was in the first Republic, even the second republic.”
However, analysts say the internal wrangling within the opposition parties is largely responsible for their inability to provide effective opposition to the APC.
In the last two years for instance, the PDP and other opposition parties have been gasping for breath as they grapple with intractable leadership crisis within their folds. From the PDP, which is the main opposition party, to the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and the Labour Party (LP), it has been a tale of woes.
After the 2015 general election, where it suffered defeat, the PDP which ruled the country for 16unbroken years was expected to provide effective opposition. But no long after, the party was thrown into crisis.
The crisis that has kept the party on its knees in the past one year started over wrangling on who was responsible for its loss in the last general election. In no time, the then PDP National chairman, Adamu Mauzu, whose leadership changed the game for the party was forced to resign.
After his resignation, his deputy, Uche Secondus, took over the leadership of the party in acting capacity. But a lot of members of the party, who felt very bitter with the party’s poor outing in the 2015 poll, faulted the emergence of Secondus as acting National Chairman. They demanded the resignation of the entire National Working Committee (NWC).
It took a Court judgment from former Presidential Adviser, Ahmed Gulak, to force Secondus out as acting chairman. The Adamawa born politician had obtained a court judgment that either he or anybody from the North- East, where Muazu hails from, should succeed him as PDP national chairman.
Armed with this judgment, Gulak stormed the National Secretariat of the PDP and declared himself national chairman.
The party leaders quickly convened a meeting of its National Executive Committee (NEC) , where former Borno state governor, Senator Ali Modu Sheriff emerged as its new National Chairman. Sheriff, a former member of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who had joined the PDP in the run-up to the 2015 general election was supposed to be in the saddle for only three months, after which he would handover to a new chairman.
However, in no time, PDP Governors and some other party chiefs began clandestine moves to elongate Sheriff’s tenure as national chairman of the opposition party. The party convention on May 29, 2016 in Port Harcourt was supposed to be for the installation of Sheriff as national chairman. But in a twist, the governors withdrew their support for the former Borno governor at the last minute.
In the power play that followed, the convention dissolved the NWC led by Sheriff, and replaced it with a National Caretaker Committee, led by Senator Ahmed Makarfi.
Expectedly, the former governor, who had called off the convention at a hotel in Port-Harcourt, kicked. He dismissed his sack. Since then, the PDP has been factionalised, with the Caretaker Committee and the Sheriff- led NWC working at cross purposes.
In the last one year, the two feuding groups have traversed several courts in the country with many conflicting judgment on the party dispute. There have also been several efforts to find a political solution to the PDP crisis, but none has been fruitful.
Presently, the matter is before the Supreme Court. The apex court is expected to give its verdict anytime from now. But spokesman of the PDP National Caretaker Committee, Prince Dayo Adeyeye blamed the APC for the crisis rocking the opposition parties.
He told Daily Sun that the ruling party has been very intolerant of opposition. According to him, because the APC knows it has not performed, it was deliberating distablising the opposition, so as to perpetuate itself in power.
He further said: “No party is immune from crisis, but if the APC had not had hand in our crisis, the crisis would since have been over. They know that the only way to prevent their defeat in the next election is to destabilise the opposition.”
Adeyeye, who is also a former minister of State for Works, described the last two years as horrible for the opposition. He noted that apart from fueling crisis in the opposition parties, the present government was using the Department of State Security (DSS) and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to haunt key opposition figures in the country.
“As you know, this government does not want opposition. They have demonstrated this in every way possible. They know they have not performed. That is why they have done everything to cripple the opposition. You have seen the way they have harassed our members using the DSS and the EFCC,” he stated.
Like the PDP, the APGA and LP are also embroiled in a leadership crisis. Just last week, the Enugu High Court sacked National Chairman of APGA, Victor Oye and replaced him with a former gubernatorial candidate of the party, Chief Martin Agbaso.
The court judgment is sequel to a suit filed by the Secretary of the party in Enugu state, Comrade Mike Alioke, challenging Oye’s continued stay in office after the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party affirmed his suspension on October 5, last year.
The LP has not faired any better. Recently, some official of the LP met and “sacked” Alhaji Abdulkadir Abdulsalam, and some other members of the party’s NWC over alleged “highhandedness.”
The group had alleged that “since the October 11, 2014 national convention of our great party held in Akure, Ondo state, the affairs of the party have been mismanaged with persistent impunity, high-handedness, dictatorship and crudeness leading to the unjust, unconstitutional and unilateral dissolution of states executive committees (SECs) of the party and suspension and/or expulsion of prominent members and leaders of the party by Alhaji Abdulkadir Salam.” Salam in response to his purported sack said “Only the national convention can remove the national chairman, the party’s constitution is very clear.”
On his part, the national chairman of African Democratic Congress (ADC), Okey Nwosu, also told Daily Sun that the ruling party and its government have been very hostile to the opposition.
Like Adeyeye, Nwosu lays the blames on the leadership crises in opposition political parties on the door steps of the ruling APC. He said the ruling party deliberately creates crisis in opposition parties to further its own goals.
The ADC leader noted that for instance, when a serving senator elected on the platform of the LP wanted to cross carpet to the APC, they instigated crisis in the opposition party to create the right atmosphere for the defection.
Furthermore, Nwosu added “opposition has been oppressed. It has been under severe oppression under this government. Because of lack of appropriate democratic institutions, men in power still play God. You can see that the different opposition party leaders are under harassment. Look at the way the EFCC is been used. If you are in APC, then you are good. If you are not in APC, you are harassed. The opposition is under siege.”
Not only is the opposition political divided, the organised Labour is also factinaliased. In Nigeria’s political history, the Labour movement is known to have effectively checked the excesses of government, especially when the interest of the masses is involved.
But for the time since inception of the current democratic dispensation in 1999, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), which is the umbrella body of Nigerian workers, is also divided.
The NLC is presently factionalised between Ayuba Wabba of the Medical and Health Workers Union of Nigeria and Joseph Ajaero of the National Union of Electricity Employees.
The effect of this division in the NLC is also been felt in the polity.
For instance, for the first time since 1999, the federal government got away with the increase in the price of fuel, after it increased the product from N85 per litre to N145. When the new price regime was announced in May last year, the NLC called for a strike. But the Ayuba -led labour movement was forced to call off the strike after it flopped.
However, the PDP said in spite of the challenges it has faced in the past two years, it has played its role very well as an opposition party.
“In the face of all the intimidation, we have tried. We have done our best. I will give us a very high mark, given the situation we operated,” Adeyeye, stated.