Iliyasu Gadu
Ilgad2009@gmail.com
08035355706 (Texts only)
Defections are normal occurrences in politics. Indeed from ideological differences and strategies to deep intractable crises, one can think of any number of reasons for members of a political party to either seek to leave the party and establish another party or join another through which such members can continue to pursue their political cause.
Just as there are legitimate reasons for people to defect from their political parties, there are also defections that can only qualify to be labelled as opportunistic and hence negative to the political development of the polity under which such defections occur.
As the tempo of political activities in the country begins to pick in the run up to the 2027 general elections, one of the prominent developments Nigerians are witnessing is the wave of defections from one party to another. These defections for the most part are from the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the Labour Party on one hand to the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC)Party.
It is not lost on political observers that beneath the posturing the defections we are now witnessing is at the prompting of the ruling party and it is opportunistic on both sides. For the ruling APC it is part of the strategy to whittle down the strength of the opposition parties and political figures thereby denying them the platform to launch their political campaigns as the 2027 electioneering period gets into full gear. Ostensibly there is nothing wrong with this strategy as it reflects a tenor of legitimate politicking which is not new in this country.
But a texture of this sort of politicking is not just in the crises that the ruling party is fomenting in the opposition using well positioned agent provocateurs within, it is the unmistakeably tending towards the total annihilation of the existing opposition political parties that should worry us.
And all this seem driven by fear of legitimate political competition which is required and which gives Nigerian voters the freedom of choice in a democratic setting such as hours. The ever present fear of performing poorly or possibly even losing the 2027 elections has fostered a sense of paranoia in the ruling party which in turn is driving it towards a scorched earth political campaign leading inexorably to a total eclipse of democracy in the country.
Of the wave of defections that have occurred in recent weeks, the one involving the entire Delta state PDP perfectly illustrates the scenario we are talking about here. As far as we know, the PDP was the ruling party in Delta state. From the Governor Sharriff Oborevwori to the federal and state legislators this a slam dunk PDP state. There have been no reports of crises within the PDP in the state and certainly none of the type that would be so intractable to warrant even a partial let alone defection of the entire PDP party structure into the ruling APC. It is even bizarre that the running mate of the PDP presidential candidate in the 2023 elections Atiku Abubakar and former governor of Delta state Ifeanyi Okowa was quoted to have said that the reason for the wholesale Delta PDP defection was to ‘’take Delta state to Abuja’’.
But Nigerians are not fooled. The Constitution provides for an individual to leave his party for another if it is sufficiently established that the party he belongs to has been embroiled by deep intractable internal crises which had resulted in its factionalisation. But as earlier stated and as such thing exists in Delta PDP it can only mean that this is the beginning of a plan by the ruling APC in collaboration with its agents to subsume states where opposition parties are in control under it. And it is instructive that Delta state where the First Lady Oluremi Tinubu hails from is flagging this complete capture of the entire political space by the APC. Reports have strongly hinted that governors of other opposition states will soon implement the Delta template.
As much as the opposition governors and the APC are trying to explain that there is no collaboration between them in this endeavour and that this is an exercise in pursuit of the right to freedom of political association which also happens in other democratic climes, Nigerians cannot be convinced that just suddenly an epidemic of love affair has broken out for President Tinubu and the ruling APC among governors of the opposition states.
The truth which both the opposition and the APC are striving to hide is that they are so driven by panic and paranoia about the 2027 elections that they are both willing to destroy the opposition political parties entirely in order to secure victory at the polls. This is the zero sum game that the APC and its willing agents and collaborators in the opposition are working to bring about in 2027.
But let us pause to consider the following posers. How will the ruling party explain to Nigerians in 2027 why the PDP the main opposition party cannot produce presidential and possibly no Senators and House of Representatives candidates for the elections? Will the total destruction of PDP be the price Nigerians have to pay for APC to ‘’win’’ the 2027 elections? Can the APC feel comfortable ruling Nigeria as the sole political party after it may have decimated the PDP and other opposition political parties? And can the APC be able to manage the expectations of the deluge of political figures that have been trooping into its ranks in the coming months and beyond? How is it possible and justifiable for the APC to run Nigeria as a one-party state when our complexity and diversity requires that we have a plurality of political parties reflecting the different tendencies and interests of the country?
These are the posers that the ruling APC must consider as it sets the stage for a total decimation of the political opposition in Nigeria.
But the APC must do well to dwell on what happened in the past when the ruling parties at the various times in the past sought to take a similar path. In the first republic when the ruling Northern People’s Congress (NPC) attempted to choke off the opposition political parties, this fostered the turbulent political incidents of those days that led inevitably to the truncation of democracy and the tragic consequences. Again in the second republic, the ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN) went headlong on a dubious ‘’landslide’’ electoral capture which ultimately ended yet again in tears for the country. During the Abacha military dictatorship, we all witnessed how the maximum ruler attempted to forcibly foist himself on the existing political parties as their joint presidential candidate. We all knew what happened afterwards.
These unfortunate historical experiences ought to be an instruction for us in our democratic march. The ruling APC in its desperate attempts to totally capture power driven as it were by paranoia, must stop to consider the consequences both for itself and the country.
Off the Greed
Tiring of paying huge sums of money (reportedly about 47 billion naira annually) as bill for power consumption in the Aso Presidential Villa, President Tinubu has approved the sum of 10 billion naira for the installation of solar energy as alternative source of power to the Villa.
What this tells us is that the nation’s seat of power is itself is not immune from the greed and inefficiency of the power sector which Nigerians have been groaning under. A few states have followed the presidency’s example in this regard. So what about the general Nigerian people who also need but cannot afford alternative power supply to escape from the greed of the national power grid? A perfect example of different strokes for different folks.
