This past fortnight, they have been planting broad hints at strategic moments and in strategic places about the coming of a mammoth political formation – a “mega-party,” its promoters, self-avowed and clandestine, have chosen to call it until it takes on a concrete existence that warrants a proper name
You could almost hear me scream “Megawetin?” when the report first bobbed up on the computer monitor.
Another political party, whether mega or mini or midi, perhaps to supplant, now that it is in terminal decline, the PDP which, without fear and without research, proclaimed itself Africa’s largest political party, destined to rule Nigeria for 60 unbroken years in the first instance?
Or to shove aside the ruling APC, the bumbling amalgam of very strange bedfellows, concerned more to share the spoils of office than to wield its enormous mandate to make a dent on the privations in which the vast majority of Nigerians are mired now and for the immediate future? The APC that was so stunningly successful in getting elected, but has been, alas, so remiss in office?
In whatever case, why is the political class so obsessed with the size of the parties that give expression to their policies and programmes?
In a sense, that obsession, like a great many of Nigeria’s festering political ailments, goes back to the time of General Ibrahim Babangida and his duplicitous transition project, in which he set the political formations seeking registration as political parties on an impossible obstacle course.
He required them to supply, in the words of the late and much lamented political scientist Claude Ake, “a level of documentation that was absurd in meticulous detail, phenomenal in bulk and prohibitive in cost…”
Labouring under the misapprehension that size was everything, each of the associations accumulated as many as 13 truckloads of documentation. In the end, none was deemed qualified.
Babangida then ordered six of the associations that came closest to winning recognition to dissolve themselves into “two mass, grassroots democratic parties,” one a little to the left, to be known as the Social Democratic Party, and the other a little to the right, to be called the National Republican Convention.
Neither the NRC nor the SDP could make a plausible claim to being grassroots political parties. They were deeply rooted in the Babangida presidency, which funded them covertly, prescribed what they could and could not do (remember those “no-go areas”) and manipulated them in every conceivable manner, to the point that it would amount to a flagrant abuse of language to call them political parties.
Nevertheless, Babangida advertised them as democratic fortresses capable of withstanding the fiercest assaults from anti-democratic forces and destined to lead Nigeria to a glorious rebirth. They collapsed right under his nose, like the house of cards they were.
Another factor in the obsession of the political class with size stems from the very definition of politics in these parts as “a game of numbers.” Forget about programmes and policies rigorously thought through, about short-term objectives and long-term goals. Consider strategies and tactics only in so far as they relate to getting the numbers right.
And remember, the whole thing is a game. “Get the numbers and everything else will be added thereunto” is the unwritten rule and the controlling ideology of Nigerian politics and governance; hence the padding of the voters’ register, ballot returns, budgets, payrolls, contracts, and indeed anything that can be padded.
By one account, the so-called mega party was conceived in the first quarter of 2016, less than a year after the APC took office. Back then, signs that the economy was headed southwards were already in the air. Oil prices had crashed to their lowest in decades. But the economy was not yet in recession – at least not officially. The Naira had not been orphaned. And there was little of the despondency and desperation one sees everywhere today. Optimism, which many regard as the defining attribute of the Nigerian character, had not taken flight.
And yet, the mega-party’s promoters, mainly careerists who lost out or had not secured as much booty as they had hoped in the patronage sweepstakes, were already scheming to bail out. The problem, as they see it, is the vehicle in which they had been doing business, not the nature of the business, nor the way they have been conducting it.
The vehicle is broken, they say; another craft must be fabricated, one that can take those on board safely to a more prosperous destination and deliver whatever they ask for. But the passenger manifest will be more or less like that of the ship they are abandoning, and so will be the captain and crew.
To swindle the credulous, they are spreading the word that the principal promoters include two titans of the APC, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, who has been alienated and marginalised by the APC he had laboured like no other person to create, and Abubakar Atiku who, in speech after speech, has voiced dissatisfaction with the way President Muhammadu Buhari and his team have been running the country.
Tinubu and Atiku have separately issued forceful denials, but they continue to be linked with the scheme which apparently will involve, among other things, mass defection of governors and elected officials in various parts of the country to the mega-party. They are planning to take a leaf from the playbook of the ACN/CPC/ANPP merger that produced the APC.
Can’t they come up with something more innovative and more inspiring?
In ancient Rome, the emperors distributed bread and staged circuses and gladiatorial shows to distract the public from the problems of the day. Here, the promoters of the mega-party are scheming to divert and distract the public with circuses only. Forget the bread.
Buhari is not yet half-way into his term. The country is beset by formidable problems. It cannot pay its way without massive borrowing. Unemployment among young persons willing and able to work stands at a scandalous high and is growing. Inflation stands at an alarming 20 per cent. The infrastructure is so broken that it would not match 1990 conditions if 50 per cent of the budget were to be devoted to it for the next five years.
Even in retreat, Boko Haram has continued to show a capacity for engaging the military in lethal firefights and for striking almost at will on soft targets. There has been a lull in the murderous ravages of armed cattle herders devastating farms and communities. But who can say that such brigandage is ended?
If just a small fraction of the casualties of roads and domestic accidents reported daily had occurred in six months in a community, the elders would have set out to appease their gods. Since we are such a prayerful country, it is a wonder that President Buhari has not declared a National Day of mourning, prayer and atonement.
In the midst of all this, the people that are lining up to join the mega -party are as self-absorbed as always. They are demanding that 20 per cent of the budget be handed to them for bogus “constituency projects,” in addition to the millions they appropriate unto themselves with scant regard for transparency and due process. They will not touch motorcars assembled in Nigeria. Nothing less than exotic American-specification SUVs fit for their distinguished and honourable frames.
This mega-party thing, it has to be said, is a flight from responsibility, and a distraction the country cannot afford. Its promoters can best serve the country by carrying out to the best of their abilities the tasks enjoined by their elective or appointive offices, and in keeping with their oaths of office.
The vehicle is not the problem, gentlemen. You are the problem, individually and collectively. If you empty it and fill it with passengers and crew cut from the same cloth as the former passengers and crew, you will get the same outcome.
Correction
I was in error when I stated in my December 12 column (“Sit-tightism: A Primer”) that descendants of Sheikh Alimi have been sitting tight on the Ilorin royal throne for 120 years. Actually they have been at it for 192 years, no shaking.
