APC, PDP and Nigeria’s free fall, By Segun Ayobolu
Except for anyone living in a veritable fool’s paradise, the stark truth is that Nigeria today is in free fall. The existential conditions of millions of Nigerians are horrendous. The country stands at the very precipice of disaster threatening to implode at anytime with an amazingly distracted political class inexplicably incapacitated to do anything about it. This is certainly not being alarmist. In a recent report, for instance, the World Bank states that poverty reduction has stagnated over the last decade with more and more Nigerians continuously falling below the poverty line. The number of poor Nigerians is projected to hit 95.1 million in 2022.
Beyond the coldly informal figures offered up by economists and statisticians, the reality and pervasiveness of poverty stares Nigerians in the face on a daily basis. Inflation spirals and urban food prices in particular spike relentlessly. In the face of what has become the latest incident in a repeated cycle of national grid collapses, the entire nation has in recent weeks been plunged in virtual darkness. Following the inexcusable paralysis of the governing class since 1999 to ensure an efficiently and transparently run local petroleum sector predicated on functioning domestic refineries, the prodigal importation of refined petroleum products has hit the country with a recurrent petroleum scarcity crisis; a situation worsened by the importation of contaminated fuel for which there is obviously no intention by the authorities to sanction those responsible.
The irresponsibility of the governing elite and the resultant import-dependent petroleum sector has made the country Ill-prepared for the implications of the unforeseen Russian-Ukraine war with the consequent skyrocketing of diesel prices. This is in turn having ripple negative effects on critical sectors of the economy particularly manufacturing with further deleterious consequences for already astronomical unemployment figures. Even as the political class, governors and ministers for instance, are decidedly focused on the pursuit of power and political offices come 2023 to the marginalization of meaningful governance, the bandits, terrorists and assorted criminal elements are decidedly focused on their dastardly mission of killing, stealing and destroying; an objective towards which they are continuously varying their modus operandi. Ekiti state governor and Chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF), Dr Kayode Fayemi, hit the nail on the head in his response to the terrorist attack on the Abuja-Kaduna train when he said, “First, as leaders, we owe the victims and their relations an apology as these unwarranted acts of violence are becoming too regular and they basically question our collective capacity to govern”.
True, the flames of the Boko Haram- insurgency in the North-East have been considerably doused while the hitherto fiercely marauding killer-herdsmen appear to have been checkmated to a reasonable degree. But this week’s terrorist attack on the Abuja-Kaduna rail and the attendant deaths, injuries and kidnappings; the earlier breach of the kaduna airport by terrorists who even prevented an aircraft from taking off indicates that the criminals are extending their tentacles beyond roads to make other avenues of transportation as unsafe and hazardous as the roads. Beyond this, as those in power adamantly and obtusely keep the country’s security architecture unitary and inflexible for a complex, plural polity, considerable swathes of space succumb to the sovereignty of the denizens of the underworld as pervasive armed robbery, kidnapping, banditry, rape, endemic ritual killing, communal upheaval and cybercrime among others become the norm.
The gross devaluation of human life and fragility of property across the land makes nonsense of the otherwise impressive strides of the APC administration in the modernization and expansion of infrastructure.
When he appeared on a Channels television programme a few weeks ago, the governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir ‘el -Rufai, was asked if, given current socio-economic and political indices, the APC had not disappointed most Nigerians as regards its promised change in 2015. He admitted that the party had indeed not largely lived up to the expectation of Nigerians but expressed optimism that a majority of the people would still prefer the APC when its performance is compared to the failings of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the preceding 16 years when the seeds of the current malaise were sown. On his part, the tempestuous Rivers State governor, Mr Nyesom Wike, when he featured on the same programme this week, wondered why, if the PDP was as bad, incompetent and corrupt as portrayed by the APC in 2015, the latter has filled its critical party and elective offices with PDP decampees. What, he asked, has the APC done to remedy the alleged wrongs of the PDP after almost eight years in power reasoning rather that conditions in the country have worsened under the current ruling party.
It is an ultimately sterile debate, an unproductive journeying in cycles. As the fluidity with which their members move from one to the other in a ceaseless game of musical chairs shows, it is obvious that both parties are two sides of the same coin. Apart from astonishingly cloning the PDP structurally, stylistically and philosophically, the APC has scandalously squandered the opportunities to impact positively on governance and the well being of Nigerians in the last seven years just as recklessly as the PDP did in the preceding 16. That is why I have argued in this space that rescuing Nigeria from her current free fall cannot be accomplished by either party as currently constituted. But since there is no other party reasonably within sight with the organizational spread and structural reach capable of effectively competing with the two in national elections for now, the only hope of salvation for Nigeria is the emergence in the 2023 polls of a candidate on the platform of either, with the vision, competence, demonstrated network, courage and proven track record of capacity to run an inclusive government, think creatively, strategically and out of the box as well as do things differently. It will be a contest between candidates, not parties.
In the alternative, the APC and PDP will continue with their game of unproductive musical chairs, succeeding each other after a number of electoral cycles, with the country pushed closer and closer to the brink due to incompetent and venal governance until there is an implosion and final blackout. Or the impotence and imperviousness to change of the two behemoths may worsen to the extent that progressive social forces including labour, activist civil society groups, the impoverished peasantry and radical academia are compelled to coalesce and organize politically for power through the ballot box. Their last National Conventions confirm that the two parties are essentially vast election fighting machines which special interests perennially struggle to capture in a bid to assume state power at different levels with little or no detailed policy plans on how to utilize such power to achieve radical socio-economic and structural transformation of the country.
The PDP was formed essentially to displace and replace the military in 1999. It had no notion of what to do differently with power. The party for 16 years thus implemented the same neo-liberal structural adjustment economic policies pursued by preceding military regimes. The APC was cobbled together as a coalition to dislodge the PDP at the centre in 2015. Once it achieved its objective, there was little it did differently from the PDP in terms of fundamental policy change. The APC has even been largely served by the same economic technocrats and advisers that the PDP relied on.
Efforts by the executive and legislature of various governments at the national level since 1999 to find solutions to the country’s multi-dimensional crises have hardly made any meaningful headway. This is because their actions and policy initiatives hardly sprang from well defined party platforms and manifestos embodying a clear ideology and philosophical framework. The input of the party as the most critical factor in policy conceptualization to which governments elected on its platform must be bound was the secret of the Action Group (AG) and Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN)’s phenomenal successes in the first and second republics as we will see next week. Organizing and running a political party is no tea party. A party organized to win political power without a distinct and well thought out plan of what to do with it in terms of rigorously articulated policies and programmes is no party but a rally.
First published in The Nation Newspaper
