Are there any fundamental differences in ideological orientation or philosophical outlook between Nigeria’s two hegemonic parties, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)? Many Nigerians would say no. Both are essentially two sides of the same coin. Their leading members jump from one to the other with amazing ease. Many of them are more preoccupied with the acquisition of power more for material accumulation than any transcendental purpose. But is this perception of the two behemoths as organizational Siamese twins in terms of underlying motivating beliefs, values, assumptions and policy or articulations true? I don’t think so. What the just concluded elections have shown is the gradual crystallization of both parties along distinct ideological polarities.
Vice President Professor Yemi Osinbajo (SAN), in particular has, at various forums during the campaigns and after, incisively and painstakingly enunciated details of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration’s policy initiatives that reveal the APC’s emergent progressive ideological character. Under the APC in the last four years, there has been a massive channeling of public resources not just towards public infrastructure but also to succor the most vulnerable segments of the citizenry.
Professor Osinbajo has constantly pungently reiterated the fact that, although the PMB administration has since 2015 earned far less from oil than the preceding PDP administrations did, the APC has done more in terms of investment in infrastructure and poverty alleviation in four years than the PDP recorded in 16 years. The PDP has found this irritating, annoying and no more than a mantra of excuses for failure to deliver on the APC’s electoral promises. But Osinbajo’s facts seem incontrovertible.
In the VP’s words, “…lack of integrity in leadership and corruption, in particular, was the reason why we were finding it difficult to make progress. I explained that that’s why we earned $383 billion in four years, 2010-2014, the highest ever in the history of our country, and yet Lagos – Ibadan Expressway was not done. Lagos-Kano railway and all that is being done today were not done then. We cannot point to a single major infrastructure project that was completed in the 10-year period despite the high earnings including power”. On the contrary he reels out verifiable facts about the accomplishments of the PMB administration in infrastructure in its first term in diverse sectors including roads, rail transportation, bridges and power across the country’s geo-political zones.
The scale of the APC’s investment in its Social Investment Programme (SIP) in the last four years is particularly remarkable. Through the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP), for instance, loans ranging from N50,000 to N350,000 each were disbursed to more than 300,000 market women, traders, artisans and farmers across the country. This resulted in 349,000 beneficiaries opening new bank accounts/wallets thereby being drawn into the formal economy.
Over two million petty traders gained access to micro-credit ranging from N50,000 to N150,000 through the Trader-Moni scheme administered by the Bank of Industry (BOI). Another 500, 000 traders operating through cooperatives benefitted from the Market-Moni micro credit scheme. And no less ambitious is the administration’s school feeding programme, which has provided a balanced meal for 9,300,892 pupils in 43,837 public primary schools in 26 states across Nigeria.
Breaking this down, Osinbajo reveals that “the programme employs 95,422 cooks and over 100,000 smallholder farmers linked to the scheme” resulting in the “procurement, preparation and distribution of 594 cattle, 138,000 chickens, 6.8 million eggs and 83 metric tonnes of fish each week.” The positive implications of this kind of deliberate and unprecedented conditional cash transfer of resources towards those on the lowest rungs of society’s economic ladder cannot be overemphasized.
It is of course obvious that with this massive infrastructure and social investment expenditure by the PMB administration, it is impossible for the grand larceny witnessed under the PDP, with a few individuals stealing humongous amounts of now recovered funds from state coffers, to take place under the APC. It is not that corruption has ceased to exist. But it cannot be practiced on a scale as injurious to the polity’s collective well being as witnessed during the GEJ administration.
There is no doubt then that the APC is gaining in ideological clarity and organizational self definition. The party certainly does not derive intellectual inspiration from such extremist free market, neo-liberal economists such as Milton Friedman, Fredrick Hayek, W.W. Rostow and his ‘non-communist manifesto’ or their political apostles such as Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher or Donald Trump. For these, society is made up of atomistic individuals involved in a Darwinian ‘survival of the fittest’ struggle. Free market fetishism, like electricity, permits of no feelings. Efficiency as epitomized by corporate profits is its guiding angel. State welfare to cater for the weak is not only indulgent; it breeds inefficiency, hurts business and hobbles progress. The state is an indispensable evil that must only be tolerated and its debilitating expansive proclivity curbed through aggressive privatization, deregulation, public sector downsizing and drastic curtailment of social subsidies. Rather, economically virile individuals and organizations must be given maximum opportunity to thrive and make profit so that wealth can trickle down for the benefit of the less able specie of the free market jungle.
The APC’s Social Investment Programme would appear to draw intellectual inspiration from progressive economists like Dudley Seers or the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics winner, Amartya Sen. It was Seer who posited the three questions: ‘What has been happening to poverty? What has been happening to unemployment? And what has been happening to inequality?’ as the most critical in determining a society’s level of development. According to Seers, “If one of two of these central problems have been growing worse, especially if all three have, it would be strange to call the result ‘development’ even if per capita income doubled”.
Sen contends that inevitable components of any meaningful economic development must include freedom of opportunity, freedom to access credit as well as economic protection from abject poverty for the vast majority. As Professor Osinbajo never tires of pointing out, the APC’s massive social investment scheme would not even be on the cards at all but for PMB’s personal integrity and commitment to prudence, fiscal discipline and transparency in governance. That is why the resources are now available to be channeled for the benefit of the poor.
Even then, Buhari’s inexplicable ambivalence, even indulgence, towards trusted members of his inner caucus who abuse his trust and taint his administration’s image must have been a factor in the PDP’s surprisingly impressive showing in the 2019 polls. If putting a check on such aberrant aides who constitute an albatross to his government is one of the promised ‘tough decisions’ to expect from Buhari in his second term, he may yet lay the foundation for a long stay in power by the progressives.
The APC national chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, a veteran labour activist and leader as well as brilliant progressive polemicist is no doubt best placed to give ideological direction to the APC. The more dynamic and result-oriented of the APC progressive governors obviously take their bearing from Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s theory and praxis of governance as paradigm- setting helmsman of Lagos State between 1999 and 2007.
It is certainly for his commitment to the best interest of the party as well as his organizational, strategic and bargaining skills that party members defer to Tinubu honorifically as ‘National Leader’. Even more important and critical, in my view, is his role as intellectual torch bearer who seeks to constantly interrogate and make explicit what should be the ideological framework within which the APC’s vision and policies as a progressive party are grounded. This he did again during his 67th birthday colloquium when he stated clearly his perception of the right ideological course for the party to chart.
In his words, “People the world over more than ever are questioning the centre-right conservative model that has, with few exceptions, governed the world for the last half century…Our pursuit of the Next Level cannot be achieved by blindly following the economic path of other nations. That would be tantamount to racing to live in a building just as its long term occupants were frantically rushing out, screaming that the edifice was crumbling. We dare not enter”.
Continuing, Tinubu avers, “Our economy must be redefined to be an efficient yet moral social construct with the primary goal of optimizing the long-term welfare of the people through the sustained, productive and full employment of labour, land, capital and natural resources… To pull the nation from poverty, government must play a decisive role. It must at times direct and even develop markets and opportunities. This is nothing novel. I am only restating what the established economies did when they were young and assumed their trajectories toward growth”.
This is certainly food for thought for the APC as the party strives to achieve greater ideological clarity even as Nigerians look forward to a better deal under Buhari’s Next Level agenda. It is instructive that as military head of state between 1983 and 1985 and even now, Buhari has continued to evince an instinctual mistrust for the free market orthodoxies of the Breton Woods Institutions.
- Next week: Ideology and PDP’s Electoral Resurgence