A day after Peter Obi, Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate in the 2023 presidential election, donned his party with political grandeur by describing it as the country’s main opposition party, the real main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) indicated that its presidential candidate in last year’s election, former vice president Atiku Abubakar, would contest the next presidential election. Mr Obi’s grandiosity was reflected in his New Year press statement wherein he argued that the LP would contest the presidency again, and he would be their champion. Alhaji Atiku, said his spokesman in the 2023 presidential race, Daniel Bwala, was not only interested in the 2027 race, he would lead a coalition. The spokesman went on, rather facilely, to explain the dynamics of that race and how a coalition would be cobbled together.
Seven months into the All Progressives Congress (APC) administration, the two opposition parties have begun jostling for relevance and dominance between them. Lightning, it is said, never strikes the same place twice. But it is an idiomatic expression that has no basis in scientific reality, an expression both the PDP and LP are determined to refute by their fractious politics. Both are in the opposition today because in 2023 they despised cooperation. Now, Mr Obi is trying to settle the precedence between the two parties by assuming, regardless of Nigeria’s electoral statistics, that the LP was in the process of adjusting to its ‘natural role’ as the main opposition party. Mr Obi is always highfalutin. The LP has one governor to PDP’s 13, 34 House of Representatives members to PDP’s 102, and eight senators to PDP’s 36. It would take far more esoteric arithmetic to make that unbridgeable disparity translate into LP dominance. But the former LP presidential candidate is never one to be deterred by fact or reality.
Does Mr Obi really believe himself when he talks about the LP being the main opposition party? It is hard to tell. Those conversant with Nigerian politics and unimpressed by partisan grandstanding will search in vain for any corroboration, no matter how flimsy. His press statements, written addresses, and extempore assertions have never been as elegant or as lucid as he hopes, but somehow, he runs away with the impression that he makes rhetorical impact on a scale worthy of international approbation. “We in the Labour Party,” Mr Obi began grandly and confidently, “have undertaken in the national interest and in our undying commitment to a New Nigeria that is possible, to remain firmly in opposition and, as such, must remain focused going forward. Our collective role in nation-building remains fundamental and obligatory.” Then he launches into a flurry of identity politics, capping it with delusion of grandeur. Said he: “I wish to thank members of the Labour Party, the Obidient Family, friends, and well-wishers of Nigeria for their loyalty, resilience, tenacity, and commitment to true democracy. We will continue ongoing discussions and efforts for the Labour Party to adjust to our new role as Nigeria’s main opposition party. We will continue to constructively engage all Nigerians and our friends, who have now realised the vast implications of the road not taken; and the folly of national interest decisions predicated on sentiments and primordial interests.”
Mr Obi appears determined, regardless of what the facts say, to play the role he has imagined for himself. He sees himself a fearless and iconoclastic representative and even champion of Nigerian youths, a politician committed to taking the road not travelled. No, his exposition of himself and the role he has assigned his party is not just verbosity, whether written by him or by his speechwriter. His statement in fact demonstrates his unfathomable conviction in his strengths, ideas, and visions for the future. These may be unsubstantial, but he sees the whole matter differently, and his supporters, riding the waves of social media effervescence, have learnt to trust and love him. Mr Obi will keep giving them new things to ponder. They may not be able to make anything out of his statement about “the folly of national interest decisions”, and will probably laugh him to derision when he talks about these decisions, presumably the APC administration’s policies, being “predicated on sentiments and primordial interests”. Their snicker is propelled by the fact that other than Alhaji Atiku’s brief and half-hearted forays into primordialism, Mr Obi was actually the greatest avatar of primordial politics in the last presidential election. He engaged in ethnic baiting as avidly as he basked in religious politics of the most corrosive variety, much of that viciousness put on record and captured on phone taps.
So far, he has limited his opposition politics to denouncing APC policies with the same sentiments he belabours the ruling party. He has proffered no fresh ideas, demonstrated no genuine convictions, displayed no substantial respect for logic and facts, and paid scant regard to the country’s cultural and political history. The LP is not only factionalised and destitute of a guiding philosophy or ideology, it is delinked from Mr Obi who has little or no experience in founding or running a political party. So, when he speaks about constituting the main opposition to the ruling party, he appears to be talking about his political extravaganza and propaganda as well as his desultory approach to politics. He is, however, unlikely to upstage the bigger, more grounded, more ideological PDP. Whereas the LP is essentially about Mr Obi, and to a lesser extent, its surrogate mother, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), the PDP has wider reach and more indomitable political figures besides Alhaji Atiku. The LP could not make any impact outside Mr Obi; but the PDP, as events will dictate in the coming months, will prove it can do without the paradoxes of its former presidential candidate: his detachment, aloofness, presumptuousness, and monarchical airs.
Mr Obi conflates his demagoguery with substance and ideology, hence the enduring flimsiness of his politics. But the PDP is gearing up for a dramatic resurgence. That resurgence will likely outpace and diminish the LP’s social media frenzy. But whether it can match the APC’s increasing surefootedness remains to be seen. The economy has not yet proved responsive, and the Bola Tinubu administration has not yet chalked up remarkable achievements; but the cognoscenti anchor their conclusions and responses on the magnitude of the depredation of the Muhammadu Buhari years and estimate the tentative impact of the new administration’s ongoing efforts to reset the political and economic substrata. The administration may not have achieved a rhythm yet, but even the most acerbic critic suspects that it is boldly reappraising Nigeria’s governing paradigms. Given the depth of the Tinubu administration in policies and staffing, it is only the PDP that appears capable of producing the oppositional politics Mr Obi has self-servingly spoken about.
However, if Mr Bwala’s statement accurately reflects the thinking of both the PDP and Alhaji Atiku, it is nevertheless unclear whether the party can pull off the magical coalition they vouchsafed to a wary and frankly disenchanted public last week. When the party was on the cusp of victory in last year’s presidential election, it abhorred mending fences, was indifferent to internal wrangling, called the bluff of disaffected members, and nonchalantly assumed intraparty fights could not sabotage its success. But that factionalism proved lethal. Months after the election, the party and candidate still refused to acknowledge their faults. Instead, they sold themselves the lie that the victorious APC probably rigged the election, or if that was unpersuasive, that the APC candidate was most assuredly unqualified to contest. If they spent months denying their self-inflicted injuries, why do they now confess and yield to the indispensability of putting together a coalition as a winning strategy?
Spokesman Bwala put it elegantly: “Some elements in the NNPP came out and said they suspended its presidential candidate. In Labour you see what the Apapa group did. They will never allow somebody to rest. In the PDP, you have seen some elements. He (Tinubu) will make sure all the political parties continue to have problems. But once there is a coalition of the parties, some of these people that are giving the headache in the political parties would have been swallowed. For example, once you solved the Nyesom Wike question in PDP, you would have solved all the problems…Sure, he (Atiku) would run…” Mr Bwala appears more realistic than his principal, Alhaji Atiku, who was prodigal with his chances. But perhaps it is still too early to determine whether the coalition of their dream could be cobbled together or, if the leading opposition party unite and bring other aggrieved or fringe parties under their umbrella, whether the president would not anticipate their strategies and, as Mr Bwala himself insinuated, booby-trap their coalition.
Neither the APC nor President Tinubu is of course invincible. But this is the first time a man with a mind of his own, someone not sponsored by a military or civilian cabal, will assume the presidency on his own steam and with his own resources. The president has not only proved tactical in politics, he has demonstrated courage and an uncanny ability to second-guess his opponents and take the wind out of their sails. How the PDP coalition, even if it incorporates Mr Obi, the LP, and a host of aggrieved groups of governors and lawmakers, can penetrate the APC/Tinubu armour is not exactly clear. But first, it has to be determined whose ego, between the staid and anachronistic Alhaji Atiku and the dreamy and apocalyptic Mr Obi, is more brittle.
