Nigeria’s democracy was never more threatened than immediately after the February 2023 presidential election. The threats were multilayered. Those who lost the poll headed for the courts, tried to browbeat the judges through orchestrated campaigns to shame them, suborned foreign courts and organisations to sanction the delegitimisation of the poll, incite public and civil society insurrection, attempted to arrest the conclusion of the electoral process, campaigned for and instigated coup d’états, and sponsored street protests of all kinds using the unions. That democracy has lasted for some 24 to 25 years, though it sometimes wobbled badly along the way, is of no significance to the plotters. Their main goal was to destroy democracy than celebrate the longevity of a process that seemed to have disinherited them, nor were they keen on getting bogged down in debates about whether what would replace the democracy they resent met civilised standards. Their last gasp plot was the deployment of hunger and hardship concerns to instigate violent street actions – not protests as Amnesty International persistently conflates – capable of overthrowing democracy.
After about 18 months of feverish plots to undermine democracy, the plotters appear to be ready to give up and instead focus on organising themselves for the next polls. They may not have relented in sabotaging public facilities, such as electricity transmission lines and towers as well as national facilities in order to discredit the administration, but they are quietly turning their attention to the internal affairs of their opposition political parties. The jostle for positions of influence is gently beginning, but there will be no commensurate fight to reform or sanitise party platforms and fine-tune party ideologies. Neither of the two opposition parties, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP), has cleaned up its act, but they hope that by some magic, their parties would suddenly become better organised and more appealing to the electorate. They hope they can palliate the unhappiness of internal dissenters and smother the fires within. Hope may be irrelevant in delivering needed solutions to the parties, but they will keep hope alive for want of a more scientific approach to the crises that have baffled them for two agonising years.
It is too early to tell how sanguine the anti-democratic forces would be about their chances of surviving the next two years intact, let alone flourishing, until the next polls. They are limited in every area of politics, and are stymied by their almost total lack of imaginativeness. Indeed, two factors will in summary determine how well they can respond to the changing dynamics of Nigerian politics. Firstly, the PDP and LP presidential candidates in the last poll, former vice president Atiku Abubakar and former Anambra governor Peter Obi respectively, probably feel a sense of emptiness gnawing at the back of their minds, particularly their political ideas and platforms. Alhaji Atiku will be 80 years old at the next poll, and neither he nor his family can tell what kind of deterioration will come upon him or unnerve him. Already, despite retaining his age-old truculence and intransigence, he has become lethargic. Mr Obi deployed ethnic and religious politics in the last poll with devastating aplomb. But the Bola Tinubu administration has taken away the religion leg of that infamous pair of weapons, leaving only the ethnic card for the former governor. Mr Obi will be unable to exploit the remaining isolated card as ferociously as he did in 2023. The Southeast may be clannish, but they are not stupid. They read the trends diligently and will be painfully aware that the ethnic card alone will not fetch their champion the presidency, assuming he contests.
But a video shared on X (Twitter) last Saturday may perhaps hold some promise for Alhaji Atiku’s and Mr Obi’s supporters. In the video, the former vice president hosted Mr Obi to a breakfast in Yola, Adamawa State, prompting, despite the incongruity of the event, discussions about an impending coalition between the former candidates. They had aligned in 2019 on the PDP platform to fight the presidential election of that year against ex-president Muhammadu Buhari, but were trounced. The joint ticket failed mainly because it could not find a platform that resonated with voters. In the 2023 poll, however, Mr Obi’s platform was as passionate as it was evocative; but delinking from Alhaji Atiku made both candidates vulnerable to the APC’s divide and rule tactics, and a great thrashing. Speculations about the purpose of the Yola breakfast may not be far off the mark. They indicate that some form of alliance may be in the offing, for the two gentlemen have recognised that going into any presidential electoral war individually was a recipe for disaster. That disaster is certain to reoccur if the two politicians do not join forces. Even then, they may yet discover that forming a coalition takes hugely away from their individual appeal. It is not clear why Alhaji Atiku uploaded the video, instead of Mr Obi. What is, however, clear is that the former vice president still entertains the chimerical hope that he could still run for the presidency at 80. He obviously hopes that President Tinubu will make more enemies than friends in the months ahead, and the economy would go into a tailspin, in order to facilitate the chance of beating the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2027.
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Secondly, the anti-democratic forces, aided by saboteurs of power grids and other facilities and policies, will hope that the economy will not respond to all the medications administered by the Tinubu administration. Should hunger, exchange rate, inflation and insecurity remain on the front burner months to the election, they would hope the formation of a political coalition could finally unhorse the administration and doom its chances in the next poll. But that is hard to bank on even for politicians as indurate as Alhaji Atiku and Mr Obi. Current economic indicators, not to talk of the immense potential of other far-reaching and radical measures like the hated tax reform bills, seem to show that the economy is both on the mend and remains responsive to medications. It may sound propagandistic, but official statements by the administration’s economic managers suggesting that the economy has turned the corner and is on the mend may be right. Exchange rate has not worsened as many analysts projected, and inflation has appeared to reduce its furious pace. Balance of trade and economic growth have remained positive, and other drivers of negative economic indices appear to have been tamed. Insecurity has also declined significantly. Hardship and hunger remain, but in the next 12 to 18 months, they are unlikely to be as ferocious as they have been in the past months.
Hamstrung by their own identity crises and internal wrangling and limitations, and disappointed by an economy cautiously churning back to life, both the PDP and LP, in coalition or singly, will struggle to find vulnerable parts in the ruling party. They will point at the ruling party’s sometimes chaotic approach to national challenges, and they will be right; but they will also be unable to deflect attention from their own self-generated chaos and mediocre politics. Their misery will be worsened by the extraordinary performance of some governors eager to transform their states and prove more than a point, not only on account of the politics of reelection, but also on account of genuine appreciation that fame can be easily procured with showpiece works in the age of social media. Niger State’s Governor Mohammed Umar Bago, Kaduna’s Uba Sani, Enugu’s Peter Mbah, Imo’s Hope Uzodinma, Anambra’s Chukwuma Soludo, Katsina’s Dikko Umar Radda, and Benue’s Hyacinth Alia, among a few others, have shown exemplary aptitude for deft politics as well as brilliant developmental strides. They were among the reasons the frenetic desire to torpedo Nigeria’s democracy did not resonate beyond a few angry and pampered cities and elites.
Rivers State may return to the medieval era, and the Southwest to strange mental and physical inertia, but the boldness and inventiveness of the Tinubu administration, assuming it can restrategise its flailing palliative policies, not to say the inspiring stories from some of the states, will help democracy retain its potency and lustre. Critics will still have a field day as long as hunger and hardship continue to defy solutions, and the political opposition, hungry for power, will be unsparing and ill-tempered. Even then, Nigeria is unlikely to return to a time when a few people will procure military insurrection or instigate anarchy, no matter how precarious the country’s condition. If the system could withstand such aggravated hardship as the Tinubu administration’s retooling policies have unleashed, without becoming vulnerable to a coup d’etat or embracing unconstitutional and repressive measures to curb criticism and disaffection, then democracy may have a bright future in these parts and be worth defending and refining.
