The leaders of the All Progressives Congress (APC) have been a little edgy over public comments on the party’s proposed presidential ticket. Citing what they believe to be feelers from party leaders, especially concerning a proposed Muslim-Muslim ticket, the commentators have argued vociferously that that proposed ticket was insensitive to Nigeria’s contemporary political culture, and is doomed to fail. That assertion, whose most public proponent was former Aviation minister Femi Fani-Kayode, was doubtless sweeping, judgemental and a little sectarian and polarising. Two weeks ago, this column addressed Mr Fani-Kayode’s frantic but subtle dalliance with both the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and President Goodluck Jonathan himself. But as I indicated then, Mr Fani-Kayode had the right to strongly object to his party’s dispositions, though as I also suggested, he needn’t migrate to another party in order to underscore his opposition to his party’s policies or direction.
Neither the APC nor its leaders have said anything quite significant about Mr Fani-Kayode’s views or his manner of tiptoeing around presidential corridors. Perhaps they are watching to see which way the cats will jump. But judging from many snide remarks here and there by party loyalists, and the impatience demonstrated by a few party leaders over the Muslim-Muslim ticket speculations, I suspect that if not now, then perhaps sometime in the immediate past, APC top shots had flirted with that unusual and controversial proposal. More, I also think that in particular, former head of state, General Muhammadu Buhari, features prominently on that proposed ticket. Given what seems to be their tenacious adherence to a rigid but unstated position on the ticket, it is hard indeed to tell what is driving the APC strategy: their belief in the direction they think the country should be heading, or their appreciation, or lack of it, of the actual direction the country is headed.
My sympathies for the APC are well known, and they are based principally on my frustrations with the abject incompetence of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to redeem Nigeria from policy inertia and ineptitude. My support for the progressives, apart from sharing ideological affinities with them, is influenced not just by what the APC stands for, which I admit can be sometimes amorphous, but by what the ruling conservative PDP does not and cannot stand for. The PDP is loth to embrace principles, chary of adopting democratic tenets, and has produced a slew of successive presidents whose only claim to the presidency is hinged on the circumstances of their background than the value of their academic qualifications and mental attributes. Their first Fourth Republic leader, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, was an unmitigated disaster to whom the wobble of our current democratic experience is wholly attributable. The next two presidents, the late Umaru Yar’Adua and Dr Jonathan, have not been inspiring at all.
It is not certain why the APC has been fairly reticent on its presidential ticket, especially its reluctance to state clearly, in the face of hostile controversy, the values and principles that will inform their choice. By allowing the speculation about its ticket to proceed in the hurtful manner it is going, the APC gives the impression it is unaware of the damage to its credibility as a thinking and progressive political party which such negative speculations can elicit. I am in fact surprised that the party seems oblivious that in the past few weeks, especially after the highly successful and imaginative presentation of its road map, it has lost huge momentum in its drive towards 2015. Not only has the PDP checkmated the APC’s blitzkrieg, it has in my opinion turned the table on the progressives, an unscrupulous advantage that has not even been vitiated by the ruling party’s obnoxious and inept handling of the anti-terror war, rising poverty, tragic and exploitative employment methods, and stultifying energy crisis, among other failures.
In an election period, it is not unusual for the pendulum of public approval to oscillate back and forth in favour of one party or the other. But the APC has a responsibility to ensure the pendulum does not swing against it too wildly. The party may have spent a huge sum of money to build itself, as it were, from nothing into a huge something, but it is not the only one investing in its future and fortune. Many of us who are not members of the party, but who see in the party an opportunity at this point in time to defeat the mediocrity that the PDP constitutes, have also invested tremendously and emotionally in the success of the APC. We know instinctively that if the APC fails, the future of Nigeria will be bleak indeed, if indeed that future is not to be erased almost entirely. We, therefore, have a responsibility to manage and coax the progressive party in the direction that will ensure success. Party leaders may be willing to take huge risks decided upon by their mystical calculations, but those risks, which can also backfire badly, must be tempered by our own detached and sometimes more informed appreciation of social and economic issues and political choices shaping the coming combat.
In short, the APC must consciously begin to reverse the momentum it unwisely surrendered to the PDP in the past few weeks. It must not hope that chance will deliver the needed opportunities to it, as it must have no doubt appreciated from its elaborate and sophisticated road map presentation. The party not only needs to consciously devise programmes and policies to stay in public glare in a qualitative and positive fashion, it must learn how to listen to the electorate, and more importantly recognise that its existence and success are defined by how best it captures or approximates the yearnings, values and ambitions of the people.
Except the APC is living in denial, it must by now have recognised that one of those areas in which it has lost ground to the PDP is the speculation that it was about to embrace a Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket. A few years back, such a ticket might have passed without too much controversy. But the fact is that both the PDP and Dr Jonathan have politicised religion to such an appalling and disgraceful level that an all-Christian or all-Muslim ticket will play into the hands of the other party. Risks are second nature to politics and politicians, but a one-religion ticket, given the horrifying slaughter going on in the Northeast and the church runs embarked upon by Dr Jonathan, will be an invitation to electoral disaster. Should the APC lose the 2015 polls, it is unlikely to have a second chance, given the tentativeness of its structure and the inchoateness of its platform. In tandem with the wish of majority of Nigerians for change, the APC has a responsibility to win the next polls, and it can only do so by taking only educated, sophisticated and not-too-radical risks.
In spite of itself, the APC must begin to ask very hard and unsettling questions about its ambitions and how to achieve them – in particular, how to win the presidency. Such questions must be bounced off those who are not members of the party, those who are not current or aspiring jobholders, and those who really couldn’t care less if the party decided to commit political suicide. One of those questions concerns General Buhari, who in one way or the other is speculated to be on the proposed ticket party leaders might attempt to cajole their members to embrace. In spite of my love and admiration for the laconic and principled general, I am not as optimistic as the party that given the fast changing dynamics of Nigerian politics, and notwithstanding the fanatical following the general elicits especially from the North, he can guarantee success for the progressives.
If the APC is to succeed, it needs a radical change of paradigm driven urgently by a new momentum designed to leave the PDP gasping for breath. I invite the progressive party to remould itself by recognising that its priority is to win the next polls first. To do that, its leading lights will have to sacrifice almost their lives. But nature is not so cruel as to leave those sacrifices unrequited.
