The starting point for the new party, therefore, is to ask: what do Nigerians want and what vision of this sleeping giant does it see a few decades down the line?
Time was 1983 and the NPN had just rumbled through the country courtesy its ignoble ‘moon slide’ victory of that year and, like Dr Reuben Abati just did, talking down to Chief Bisi Akande, the interim Chairman of the All Progressive Congress (APC), Chuba Okadigbo, himself then a presidential spokesperson, was waxing lyrical, calling both Zik and Alhaji Waziri Ibrahim, the highly regarded GNPP leader, unprintable names and asking them to shut up or be summarily dealt with.
It was in that circumstances, the Avatar, the ever clairvoyant Awo, made the prediction, a whole 30 years ahead, which is today uncannily unfolding before our very eyes. Summarising the events of that year’s general elections, one in which the writer was an active observer-participant, Awo made it clear that by its own hands, the then ruling NPN has self-destruct by acting like the thief who took far more than the owner. NPN had then just rummaged through the length and breadth of Nigeria, even claiming to have won in Oyo and Ondo states, both in Awo’s impregnable Western Region.
Consequently, at a well attended congress of the UPN in Abeokuta on Thursday, 15 December, ’83, he declared as follows: ‘The goal of dialectic process is perfection. It aims at the perfect attainment of all the virtues embodied in it. Whether we like it or not, all human beings are inescapably involved in the binary compounds of thesis and antithesis of the dialectical procession. In other words, all of us in the UPN and those of them in the NPN and other parties are already in the thesis-antithesis war. When the war is over, only the best of us will be accommodated in the synthesis, with the best in the antithesis in complete dominance’. Going forward, Papa said: ‘I do not hesitate to aver, in all sincerity and solemnity, that the NPN, together with its political regime and all that it stands for, symbolises the thesis, and that the UPN together with all those who are conscientiously and honestly opposed to the NPN, symbolizes the antithesis. The war between the two is already being waged with vehemence and inflexible resolve. Sooner or later, I believe much sooner than later -the figurative ‘explosion’ will occur in which the forces of the thesis and the antithesis, in their original forms, will disappear. Then the synthesis will appear which will embody the best in the NPN (thesis) and the best in the UPN (antithesis). But the dominant feature of the synthesis will be the best in the UPN’.
As those words rang out that historic morning in the historic Olumo city at which the writer was present, what they poignantly brought back to me , especially when Papa talked of the ‘figurative explosion’, were my classes in Dialectical Materialism at the great university of Ife, Ile-Ife, as taught by one of the very best in the business, my teacher per excellence, Dr Segun Osoba.
How prescient Chief Awolowo remains was beautifully captured by Chief Jide Awe, the Ekiti state interim Chairman of APC, as state governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi, hoisted the APC flag in the state to the great admiration and acclamation of a huge crowd of jubilating leaders, members and supporters of the brand new party on Monday, 12 August, 2013 at Ado-Ekiti, the state capital.
In a recent article in The Nation of Monday, 12 August, 2013, entitled :’ History, civil war and haunted house’, The Chairman of The Nation’s Editorial Board, Sam Omatsheye, wondered aloud as to how today’s events uncannily mirror the immediate pre civil war events in our country.
One good example of things remaining largely the same, apart from the crass insecurity that envelopes the country, was how egregiously the PDP, like NPN before it, rigged the 2011 presidential elections especially in states in the North where the CPC actually won and, to cover up, found a solution in discrediting a just and redoubtable Judge who they never wanted to head the Presidential election Tribunal which they knew would have exhumed their electoral malfeasance. The very first thing the reconstituted Election Tribunal did, therefore, was to upturn all the reliefs the earlier panel had granted Buhari , including access to election materials and presentation before it of the database of the voters’ register.
That, however, belongs to history and what must now concern us is a determination not to let our inability to learn from history repeat itself. Not many believed that APC’s registration would ever see the light of day and what did PDP not do to make it impossible? Working through agents external, and lackeys within the top echelons of the Electoral Commission, all manner of spurious, wannabe political parties with the acronym APC sprung up, one of them hurriedly filed by a self-confessed baby lawyer. It would later go to court hoping that its sponsors would be able to orchestrate the type of legal shenanigans that ensured Justice Salami’s matter was permanently before the courts. Like baby Moses in the holy writ, everything was done to abort APC but it is now here and about. It is now it’s bounden duty to shoulder those critical responsibilities Awo foresaw in what he called the Synthesis.
The starting point for the new party, therefore, is to ask: what do Nigerians want and what vision of this sleeping giant does it see a few decades down the line? The Yoruba say, if you do not know where you are coming from, you will, at least, know where exactly you are headed. PDP, as a party and government, has taken Nigeria through a rudderless decade and a half and if Nigerians do not vote right, come 2015, this visionless party may just achieve its hoped-for 60 years and more.
Without a doubt, circumstances in the country today are much more perilous than in the days of Awo and his contemporaries as, though a civil war we may have fought, nothing compared then to today’s Boko Haram which, as Abuja slept away until Obasanjo reminded them of something called carrot and stick, had carved out for itself, swathes of territory in a part of the country. Indeed nothing, not our epileptic power situation, nor the ravaging unemployment, more poignantly demonstrates the utter vacuity of the Jonathan administration than what Boko Haram has done, and continues to do to this country. Without peace, no government can embark, talk less of achieving, any meaningful economic development. Today, both Syria and Egypt are in shambles and one needs no rocket science to know that programmes for economic development must have taken a back seat in both countries.
There is, obviously a crying need for infrastructural development, for stable power to jump start industrial and other economic activities just as unemployment, especially among our young graduates has to be tackled head-on. Corruption too has become so systemic that some concerned Nigerians are now planning to go on demonstrations in both the U.K and the U.S to draw international attention to our circumstances as the federal government has proved completely incapable of fighting it since it is actually its mainstay and hope for 2015.
In order to make meaningful corrections and achieve much more, however, leaders of the new party must realise that they have the daunting task of going far beyond the merger. Reactions to my last week article were replete with accusations of lack of internal democracy -they called it imposition of candidates, – of religious extremism and ethnicity, amongst the leaders of the merged political parties just as many felt sure the party will most probably collapse on the altar of uncontrollable self-interest, especially when it comes to choosing its presidential candidate. These are all very weighty matters and although thus far, these leaders have demonstrated considerable self abnegation, much more will- power will be needed in subsuming self interest for the good of this very unhealthy country. Ego must be scrupulously kept in check and the leaders must ensure unimpeachable process of choosing its candidates for all elections, state, federal and presidential. As I concluded in my article under reference, APC has a distinct, indeed, very good chance of, not only re-engineering, but completely re- branding Nigeria.
