I do not envy the All Progressives Congress (APC) at all. Founded, as it were, a few days ago, and full of secret hopes for a future it is certain to approach with utmost trepidation, it is likely to need the daring, speed and subtlety of a David to confront the electoral rapacity, executive brutism and general apathy of the ageing Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Goliath. All patriots, irrespective of political leanings, will yearn for the new party to acquit itself well, make a huge mark politically, and possibly win the mandate to remake and redirect the country. The ultimate indicator of these possibilities will be when the four political parties, which have merged to form the APC, bury their individual structures and differences under the ultimate goal of a party determined to win the presidency and offer the Black man the leadership he has craved for since W.E. B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey inspired Pan-Africanism.
The APC is a four-in-one political party, at least for now. Among that desperate quartet – Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) – there will be some elements who cherish isolation, even if it means risking being destroyed separately. So the new party must not have any illusion it is a tightknit party with a single-mindedness that generally conduces to instant electoral victory. Nor should the party ever assume that by merely announcing a merger there would be no teething problems, no ego posturing, no ideological conflicts, and no struggle for general relevance and dominance within the party. The party will be tested to its very core with such severity that it will be forced to decide what things motivate it: the mere acquisition of power, such as is propelling the PDP into increasing mediocrity and ruin, or the beneficial uses of power, such as often inspire leading political parties in developed democracies to boundless patriotism, excellence and innovations.
A merger of political parties was always required to take on the monolithic PDP. But for about 14 years, the opposition simply could not find the good sense and courage to unite against a common and implacable foe. In retrospect, if a makeshift unity had been procured for the 2011 poll, the opportunity to resolve the contradictions that naturally restrict or even stymie the progress of a new party would have been glossed over or lost irretrievably. The APC must therefore anticipate and welcome the initial struggles and confusions that are certain to dot its difficult beginnings, and not trifle with the indispensability of building consensus and compromises. These processes are required to stabilise the party, give it a hard inner core, and make it a force to be reckoned with.
It will not be enough that the party has seemed to inspire the public with its quaint and philosophical rationalisation for merger. Chief Tom Ikimi, chairman of the merger committee of the ACN, puts it succinctly: “At no time in our national life has radical change become more urgent. And to meet the challenge, we the following political parties namely ACN, ANPP, APGA and CPC have resolved to merge forthwith and become All Progressives Congress and offer to our beleaguered people a recipe for peace and prosperity. We resolve to form a political party committed to the principles of internal democracy, focused on serious issues of concern to our people, determined to bring corruption and insecurity to an end, determined to grow our economy and create jobs in their millions through education, housing, agriculture, industrial growth etc., and stop the increasing mood of despair and hopelessness among our people. The resolution of these issues, the restoration of hope, and the enthronement of true democratic values for peace, democracy and justice are those concerns which propel us. We believe that by these measures only shall we restore our dignity and position of pre-eminence in the comity of nations. This is our pledge.” Inspiring a people, a party, and an electorate, however, goes beyond fair words. Many other elements are involved.
Much more than the big and financially well-endowed PDP, the APC can be trusted to draw on a huge reserve of intellectuals, for the new party seems to set great store by intellectualism, and real intellectuals, by training and experience, can instinctively tell where their expertise is needed. Nigerian political parties often draw a line between their parties’ guiding documents and party activities and policies. So it is one thing for the new party to write a beautiful manifesto and constitution, which I think they will manage to concoct even admirably; and it is another thing to anchor its programmes and party administration on those documents. For a party anxious to minimise differences and disagreements, would it not be tempted to indulge in the idiosyncratic pragmatism that has made Nigerian political parties both weak and colourless? If the new party is to resonate with the electorate, and is to stand a chance of doing spectacularly well in the next set of elections, it must be different in more ways than one. Indeed it must be truly remarkable. But does it have the stamina to be different? Would its leaders not feel the urgency and desperation of embracing expediency over principles, especially because in the crassly monetised politics of Nigeria, principles may sometimes appear like an abstraction and an expensive and annoying excursion into rarified environments?
I do not know whether the main reason for the merger of the four parties is to snatch power from the hands of the PDP. If it is, the agglomeration will adopt fierce short-term tactics designed to deliver the most impact in the shortest possible time. The risk, however, is that if they fail, the disemboweling logic of short-termism and the contradictions of merchandising politics will undermine future prospects of growth and success, and possibly even fragment the party. A better approach will be to structure, run and inspire the new party for the long term. That approach, as cautious and exploratory as it may seem, is not antagonistic to short term electoral gains, and it even predisposes the APC to greater stability, purposefulness and enduring exceptionalism. The PDP is united not by ideas or vision but by a sickening affection for power acquisition. The APC must strive to be different. It must make it clear that the country would profit from the noble principles that should drive a serious political party, and that nothing is too small or too big to be sacrificed for those principles. Here, alas, is a difficult dilemma. The PDP’s lengthy stay in office has brought nothing but unremitting poverty and social dislocations; and to allow the party another four years in office after 2015 would be suicidal for the country. Yet the APC would appear indistinguishable from the PDP if it should appear to be desperate and in indecent haste to acquire power.
It is too early in the day for any analyst to accurately weigh the new party’s chances. We must, therefore, concentrate on those factors the party must pay attention to in order to be a credible opposition to the ruling behemoth. The first task is for the APC to cobble together a common ideological platform from the suspect ideologies of its four constituent parts. The CPC, as everyone knows, is more pragmatic than ideological. It depends for its lifeblood on the honesty and enigmatic disposition of its main inspirer, Gen Muhammadu Buhari, who is not any more ideological now than he was in 1984 when he was military head of state. The ANPP on its own is even openly less ideological. If it has any progressive hue at all, it is to the extent that the PDP has seemed to crowd out any other serious party from Nigeria’s conservative habitat. To avoid a fate worse than ostracism, the ANPP needed to exude anything else other than conservatism; hence the merger. By embracing a very mild form of progressivism, no matter how insignificant, the party is merely being practical and adaptable.
If APGA holds any progressive credential worth considering, it is the word ‘progressives’ in its original name. There is entirely nothing else binding the party to the ideology. It has in fact neither proclaimed progressivism at any time, even feebly, nor does it care to defend or define it, carefully or casually. The party reminds one of a road interchange: every road leads to it and out of it. Either by design or by accident, the ACN aggressively proclaimed its ideological tigritude to the point that its theoretical inconsistencies and suspect democratic credentials simply faded into thin air. The party is thus rightly or wrongly considered as the only truly ideological party, almost as if progressivism is intrinsically and conceptually more virtuous than conservatism. In fact the disagreement between the party and its Southwest opponents centres on its claim to be the only progressive party in Nigeria. But a disaggregation of ACN’s progressivism will reveal its cultural roots, entitling just about any political journeyman in the zone to claim progressivism, and the signal importance of the actions, words and dispositions of its officials, particularly its governors.
Since the four constituent parties in the APC are actually clustered not too far apart on the ideological spectrum, they stand a better chance of arriving at workable and harmless compromises. They are likely to agree on external relations, even though Nigeria’s foreign policy is symptomatic of the anti-intellectual, reactive and lazy approach of Nigerian leaders to the external world. They are also likely to fashion an agreeable economic plan that is pragmatic, gently progressive, and far superior to the PDP’s, of course, on account of both the grinding poverty 14 years of the ruling party have sentenced the country and the justifiable impatience of the suffering majority praying for the application of radical anodynes. No other issue, not even religion, nor Boko Haram, will be capable of threatening the anticipated consensus. If the PDP is united by greed and intolerance, and is paranoid about holding on to power, the APC should be unified by its common detestation of the PDP, and be fanatically committed to unhorsing the clumsy giant.
Though it is at the moment preoccupied with putting down the rebellion in its fold, the PDP is not unaware of the dangers constituted by what some writers have exaggeratedly described as the APC mega party. The ruling party will very likely respond with disgruntled alliances of its own to further bloat its bigness. It will lure grumpy fence sitters in the ACN, make offers to the Labour Party which the small and ideologically unresponsive party can’t resist, and adopt measures hostile to the opposition, including abuse of judicial and legislative processes. It will also attempt to promote discord among the leading lights of the APC in order to prevent peaceful selection of candidates. The ruling party’s success in these unwholesome enterprises will depend on the unpreparedness of the APC leaders to bury their differences and recognise that the spoils of war are almost limitless beyond the plum jobs and positions of the presidency and other top posts.
The PDP is inured to the danger of fragmentation facing the country. But if the APC recognises that 2015 is probably the last chance for this generation to save the union, and to comprehensively restructure the polity and free the energies of industrious Nigerians bottled up for decades by incompetent leadership, it will sacrifice anything to win power at the centre. As this newspaper’s Hardball column said on Friday, “The country is ready for APC; what no one is sure of, but which only the party can answer, is whether the party is ready for the country.” For without doubt, except the earth shifts from its orbit, it is inconceivable that the unprecedentedly marginalised Southwest would vote for the PDP; nor would most parts of the North vote for the ruling party at the presidential level at least. And in a few parts of the Southeast and South-South, it’s a toss-up; for the voters in those eroded lands and mangrove swamps are not anybody’s fools. Indeed, given the heavy feeling of change in the air, the APC will have to be extraordinarily imprudent and pigheaded to lose the 2015 battle.
