If yesterday’s decision by the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to dissolve all state, zonal and national structures; and the on-going crisis in the ruling party has taught any lessons, it is that, in theory and practice, democracy is no vanity. You either believe in democracy and practice it; or you corrupt it for as long as you wish only to have that grand deceit explode in your face, sooner or later. The APC ended its emergency meeting at State House Tuesday, with a resolution extending the tenure of the party’s caretaker committee led by Yobe State Governor, Mai Mala Buni by another six months. The meeting also expelled a former National Vice Chairman of APC (South-south), Hilliard Eta, for instituting a lawsuit against the party and ignoring the party’s directive to members to withdraw all court cases. In point of fact though, Nigeria needs healthy political parties. Democracy does too. The healthier the party’s democratic credentials; the healthier the nation. It is therefore, not just mere wishful thinking but an ardent hope that, from the current ruckus in the APC, may emerge a better party with the interest of Nigeria and democracy at heart.
While the crisis has engendered debate about the future of the APC and the democratic process in Nigeria, it has also exposed the fact that the party that wrestled power from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2015, was not bound together by any lofty ideal; and has been nothing other than a special purpose vehicle for political contractors and sundry jobbers and predators for acquiring power for its own sake, amassing wealth via the route of government as the biggest business, and impoverishing the people so mindlessly they have neither chance nor voice to dissent. But as is always the case with all houses of cards, the APC eventually, has to face its own internal contradictions.
The argument can, of course, be made that the main opposition PDP is not much better. But it is hoped that all would learn a lesson or two from the crisis rocking the APC. While the APC leadership is locked in a frenzied but obviously haphazard effort to mend fences with rival factions, amid jostling for positions ahead of the 2023 general elections, President Muhammadu Buhari must ensure the new structures and leaders that would emerge from the restructuring exercise would align with core democratic principles and stakeholder support needed to rescue Nigeria from the current reign of terror and bad governance. It would be in the interest of Nigeria for that to be the outcome of this APC crisis.
Some people have said that the implosion of the APC was expected because of the content and character of the party. Others simply construed it as the dynamic nature of politics. Indeed, political thinkers have always seen politics as the contestation among actors with different viewpoints on the management of public affairs. For that reason, it can be argued that divergences are a necessary part of the political process. However, such differences are meaningful only to the extent that they relate to public good, but extremely worrisome when the contestations are on power for its own sake.
No doubt, from creation, the APC has remained a non-descript entity, an umbrella body of strange political bedfellows merging the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and the All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP). Few would argue that the arrangement that brought the APC to power in 2015 was bereft of strong democratic principles. In effect, all those who occupied executive positions at both the state and federal levels merely usurped party powers and undermined its supremacy to the extent that once elected, APC officials became more powerful than the party that produced them. As a corollary, loyalty shifted from the party to individuals who were either elected into public offices, appointed into same or were wealthy financiers. Party discipline was thrown overboard and executive whims and extra-constitutional behavior governed party affairs so much so that its constitution was operated only to suit the temperament of its leaders.
What is more, internal democracy was banished from the party and its members became untaught to the fact that democracy is the pleasant tyranny of the majority. General elections conducted since APC came into power have all tainted the democratization process and have been some of the worst in Nigeria’s electoral history. The APC has become an unwieldy behemoth, housing many undemocratic tendencies, especially elements which have discerned early enough that government is the fastest route to wealth and designed a way to get in at all costs. The party has thus become a clog to the democratic transformation of the polity, an unmanned monstrously-driven truck rolling over the landscape, crushing anything in its path, with its first victims being its prominent members. Given this undemocratic character of the party, the implosion that climaxed with the dissolution of the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) was hardly surprising.
The warring factions saw former party chairman, Adams Oshiomhole at daggers drawn with governors who had a catalogue of grievances against Oshiomhole; from increased repression, arbitrary suspension of members, abuse of the party constitution, whimsical organization of party primaries; suspension of state party executives without due process; illegal dissolution of APC state chapters and organization of parallel conventions which saw the party’s electoral victories reversed by the courts, among many other undemocratic conducts. The governors also argued that the foregoing antinomies were desperate permutations towards 2023 general elections designed to shut out any opposition to Bola Tinubu ahead of the party’s presidential primaries for the 2023 elections. Issues at stake, therefore, revolve around party discipline, internal democracy, transparency and accountability and the mathematics of 2023.
Apart from being an aggregation of people with commonality of interest, a political party is the motor-force of democracy and a breeding ground for leadership and policy articulation. The APC is today a mere counterfeit of what a political party should be, and simply a platform for self-aggrandizement and the realization of the ambitions of individuals without a vision for state-building. Unfortunately but not unexpectedly, the APC has been able to engage Nigerians in any debate about how to resolve critical national issues such as corruption, poverty, strike by university lecturers, intractable energy crisis, unemployment and the escalating insecurity in the country. Rather, the party is only immersed in the politics of 2023. Thus, the fundamental implication is that governance will continue to be relegated to the backburner and the delivery of public goods is off the agenda. Potentially, this has had an inherent destabilizing effect. This is why, although Nigerians may have resigned themselves to the fate of poor governance, they would not brook a situation in which the APC seeks to drag the nation into its crisis and Nigerians are made to pay a greater price for the avoidable destabilization.
Indeed, if the party and its leaders would do right by Nigerians, this crisis offers an opportunity for the APC to re-invent itself on the basis of democratic principles and service orientation. Nigerians have borne the incompetence of the party since 2015. And the result is an uninspiring state of the nation by all indices. It is difficult to say today that the country is better run than it was five years ago. The ship of state is rudderless and adrift. Therefore, the APC must ask itself why the locus of power in it is so fluid and contradictory. Between the party chairman, the National Working Committee, the APC national leader, the President and the Governors, it is not clear who is in charge of party affairs. The effect is that the party is enfeebled, existing not as a platform for nation-building ideas but only as a vehicle to power and wealth, and therefore embroiled in endlessly simmering power tussles.
This is the time for APC to re-examine itself, re-discover what it means to be a party for the people and re-invent itself for service to Nigeria in line with the finest ideals of democracy. For relevance, the party must retrace its steps because Nigerians, despite an always present cynicism, want to see the APC chart a vision for the country and demonstrate capacity to manage conflicts of interest, especially amongst its ambitious members; who should temper overriding self-interest with public good. Nigerians want to see a party with a clear vision and philosophy of governance. Also, the party must de-emphasize regional or ethnic identity politics and present a pan-Nigerian outlook and agenda. Nigerians will like to see an APC that will confront head on the life and death challenges besetting the country today.
It does not require a special skill or intelligence to recognize that Nigeria is ailing. Although the Buhari administration may disagree, Nigeria’s problems are inextricably linked to poor leadership. Little wonder the nation’s fortune has continued to plummet just as she diminishes in stature and integrity. Of course, the quality of leadership cannot be divorced from the poor choices at the polls, if choices have ever been truly permitted. The consequences, is the election of wrong persons into public offices, who in turn appoint the wrong persons as aides. No country, after all, can rise above the level of its workforce, especially at the decision-making level, hence the state of the nation. For the main opposition PDP, the current crisis in the APC provides not only cold comfort to scoffers, but offers a window of genuine opportunity for them to show-case alternative values to long suffering Nigerians desperate for real change; not empty slogans about change to the next level.
