The Hakeem Baba-Ahmed Condition
Damn your principles, stick to your party — Benjamin Disraeli
With the recent tsunami-like defections to the ruling party, we are virtually in a one-party state, or are we not? But how is that a problem? There are one party states and there are one party states. There are one-party states such as China, Russia, Vietnam, Singapore and Cuba that utilize the national consensus to force a furious developmental pace on their respective societies. On the other hand, there are one-party states such as those that litter post-colonial Africa which are nothing but cartel-like coalitions that fuel corruption and permanent stagnation. It is not one-party states that are the problem. It is the state of the hegemonic parties themselves.
In just a little over twelve years of its storied existence, the APC has moved from underdog to top dog, acquiring such heft and hulk in the process that it now sweeps everything before it with annihilating panache. This is such that close relations of its former rival, the PDP, which has been brain-dead and on life support machine for some time now, are openly wondering whether the machine should not be switched off. The APC and its asphyxiating honchos ought to be commended for poleaxing a terrible party like the PDP into a terminal stupor.
The great irony is that in close combat with its deadly rival, some of the insalubrious and unsavory qualities of the dying and unlamented behemoth appear to have rubbed off on the APC itself. Brilliantly described by Alex Ekwueme, one of its founding fathers, as “a rally rather than a party”, PDP, began life as a well-connected enforcer of state will, or what the Nobel laureate famously dismissed as “a nest of killers”. Now, it is ending it as an abandoned state orphan. After its death, the party should be cremated and its ashes sprayed across the four corners of the country if only to appease the spirit of those it has done to death in the name of “come and eat cosmology”.
There are those who will imagine that the pathological condition named above is more applicable to the mercurial and tempestuous Nasir el Rufai, the former governor of Kaduna state who has traversed all the major parties in the post-military political dispensation, rather than Hakeem Baba- Ahmed who can be seen as a harmless opportunistic technocrat with an eye on the main chance. But if you study closely Baba Ahmed’s migrations and transmigrations like a political nomad since the beginning of the post-military era, to his current “apolitical” self-canonization as a northern leader of thought, you find something far more sinister and dangerous to the health of the polity than el Rufia’s candidly vindictive political gaming. Posing as a refined statesman above the fray, a placid defender of all that is sane and noble, Baba Ahmed is yet to confess his crime and complicity against the nation as a notable functionary of INEC under Maurice Iwu’s leadership. The monumental heist committed against the nation and democracy will continue to resonate in the annals of political infamy. If this were to be a country with a culture of shame and restitution, anybody connected with such political atrocities ought to have gone home, never to be heard from again. After a lull, our man showed up as Chief of Staff to Bukola Saraki after the Ilorin-born medico and scion of the ancient Saraki dynasty seized the mantle of senate leadership in a daring broad daylight political putsch. After the stint with Saraki expired, Baba Ahmed loitered around a bit, waiting for the next assignment or self-assignation. Folk wisdom holds that a person should be wise and circumspect about what he eats, particularly when he is hungry. Despite the fact that his blood brother was a running mate to Peter Obi in the 2023 presidential election, Ahmed did not have any qualms or suffer a loss of equanimity in accepting to be a Senior Presidential Adviser in the victorious coalition led by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. He was posted to the office of the Vice President. He was neither a campaigner for nor a contributor to the APC. In any case, if he shared political bonding and ideological brotherhood with Bukola Saraki’s obviously conservative and rightwing affiliation what could he have been doing in Bola Tinubu’s government?
But the bubble soon burst. It did not take long before Hakeem found himself outside the loop of power again. It was coming to crunch mid-term and there are smart new deals to cut and newer political IOUs to secure. There are some people who prefer the indignities of political humiliation on the corridor of power to the contumely of political irrelevance outside the loop of power. Unable to endure the prospects of being a political wayfarer all over again, our man soon relocated to familiar power haunts in traditional circuits craftily re-ennobling himself as a regional elder and master of manafiki politics.
The last time we heard from him, he was at the bully pulpit hectoring the fabled northern masses about how they will be directed to vote when the hour comes. These are the same poor masses he failed to remember when he was hunting for victuals and foraging for food. Even a political fool ought to see through this shameless chicanery. Ahmed is referencing the same mythical north that is up in flames as a result of the mismanagement of ethnic and cultural diversities by him and his cohorts who see themselves as a superior caste beyond reprimand and reproach. He is referring to the same north that is ravaged by corruption and mismanagement as a result of the greed and avarice of a feudal and parasitic elite group. Like Rip Van Winkle, he will soon wake up from his catatonic slumber to discover that his north has become a mirage and that time has moved.
One-party states are always a distinct possibility in nations with weak political structures and with strong individuals serving as the binding glue that holds everything together in an otherwise chaotic amalgam of diverse and contradictory interests. This is why there is always the possibility of things dissolving into a one-party structure with autocratic despotism looming. One party states are usually a reflection of the state and status of politics where a predatory elite rules the roost upending the system and all the ancient values known to it with politicians choosing the liberty that goes with licensed licentiousness over the freedom that comes from noble exertions. This is why some of the people associated with recent defections are some of the vilest and most execrable characters ever thrown up by the post-military melee of Nigerian politics. One of them, a trained medical doctor, had served as a running mate to the presidential candidate of the main opposition party and is under investigation for making away with a colossal amount of state funds.
But we must not stop with castigating and excoriating these scoundrels alone. While that may be profoundly therapeutic, it does not address the fundamental impasse and is ultimately an exercise in futility. We must throw further and deeper theoretical light on this gathering of the tribe of politicians under one huge tent. It may well be due to what is known as the cunning of history; a fortuitous design to address some fundamental imbalance and overcome some serious aspects of the national question that have tasked and vexed human ingenuity over a whole generation. The gathering of the pan-Nigerian tribe under one huge umbrella is a symbolic affirmation of the homogenization of the Nigerian political class or what may be described as solidarity in aberration.
Henceforth, it will no longer make any sense to ascribe ethnicity, religion, region and culture to Nigeria’s problems since we may be witnessing the advent of a pan-Nigerian ruling class for the first time in the history of the nation. Second, since there are rumours and loud insinuations that there is really no difference between the APC ruling party and the PDP former ruling party the merger removes any doubt about the similarity of core ideology between the two dominant factions of the same conservative tendency. Shielding defectors from the probing fangs of the EFCC can only compound the image problem of the government and deepen its crisis of credibility. Strategic brilliance and political dissembling may then lead to moral and political opprobrium.
Something in all this would have bestirred Obafemi Awolowo in his grave. Unarguably the preeminent Yoruba political patriarch of the epoch, Awo spent his long and illustrious career fighting against the homogenization of the Nigerian ruling class. It was the obstinacy and tenacity with which he waged the battle that made his adversaries to mark him out for political elimination. Awo’s belief was that any attempt at the political homogenization of the polity robs the people of real and genuine choices and alternative policy formulations. In the First Republic, Awo spurned the attempt to coopt him and his party, the Action Group, into a National Government under the feudal rubrics of the ruling NPC. Awo instead dusted his file and became Leader of Opposition. The same scenario was to repeat itself during the Second Republic when Awo opposed with all his cerebral clout the antics and shenanigans of the ruling NPN.
At that point in time, Augustus Meredith Adisa Akinloye, aka Eegunjenmi, the wily and foxy National Chairman of the NPN, noted with wry cynicism that there were only two political parties in Nigeria: The Military Party of Nigeria and all the other parties lumped together. True enough, when the military struck later, they made no attempt to differentiate among the political class lumping all of them together as offensive vermin. Indeed in his maiden broadcast to the nation, the selfsame Major General Buhari accused all the politicians of corruption and vote-rigging, claiming that they all rigged according to their strength and resources. Awo’s attempt to carve a niche for his own party had come to naught. For the military, it is negative homogenization of the political class all the way as a strategy of containment of any challenge to its rule.
Ever perspicacious and penetrating in his judgment and outlook, the irony would not have been lost on Awo that this time around, it is Yoruba political luminaries who are at the forefront of the homogenization drive. Was he missing something in his analysis? There was no way Awo could have factored into his usually drastic evaluation the full implication for politics of military rule in all its devastation and debilitations. To facilitate its rule and ease of dominion over an unwieldy country, the military turned the nation into a vast garrison and the politicians into a subaltern class. The grinding conformity was bound to lead to some homogenization but also throw up a unified front of resistance and opposition such as it is normally witnessed in times of struggle against autocracy and despotism. Given the contradictions enumerated above, we can confidently assert that Nigeria is still very far from a one-party state.
