Q: So, are the things that differentiate the victorious APC from the defeated PDP stronger than the things that unite them as ruling class political parties?
A: I don’t think so since the things that unite all ruling class parties in Africa and the developing word tend to be stronger than the things that separate them. However, asking this question first before we have asked and responded to questions about the differentiating and unifying things themselves is like putting the cart before the horse or like starting a story at its end rather than at its beginning. There is also this fact: politics in the poor, crisis-ridden countries of our continent and the world is often like warfare and for this reason, the horse must come before the cart, otherwise we will never make our way out of the “war zone” of our politics and econmomy.
Q: Very well then, let’s proceed as you suggest. What’s the “horse” here? Or more appropriately, what are the “horses” here if we make a distinction between the things that differentiate the APC and the PDP and the things that unite them. Can we take them one by one starting with the differentiating factors between the two parties?
A: I agree with you completely, especially because both the campaigns and the results of the general elections this year have clarified differences between the two parties far beyond any of our past general elections since the return to civilian rule in 1999. Basically, the ruling party, the APC, has emerged as a center-right, populist and “nationalist” party while the PDP, as the main or indeed only opposition party, has done everything possible to confirm its right-wing, pro-business and pro-imperialist leanings. Not only did Atiku and the PDP do and say everything necessary to indicate that their administration would be a very business-friendly one, they also signified to the world of international finance and global capitalism that under their rule, Nigeria would overnight become a place where it is both good and profitable to do business. To demonstrate his utter seriousness on this point, Atiku loudly and clamorously declared that even at the cost of his life, he would once and for all privatize and sell off NNPC. And as if all these were not enough, Atiku and the PDP openly invited the US and the European Union to impose travel bans and economic sanctions against any Nigerians that worked to prevent them from winning the elections by unfair means. Dear compatriot, if you were surprised that Atiku, who had been unable for a long time to obtain a travel visa to the US finally succeeded in doing so during the campaigns, look no further for an explanation than these Atiku-PDP decisive embrace of old-style pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist agendas…
Q: Wait a minute, wait a minute! Are you saying that APC itself is not pro-capitalist, pro-imperialist and pro-privatization? When APC took over from PDP as the ruling party, did it not continue massive privatization of national assets and public enterprises and utilities as a matter of both ideology and policy? Isn’t it for mostly sentimental reasons that Buhari is still reluctant to sell off NNPC? Aren’t leading members of his administration or his party like Raji Fashola and Nassir El Rufai, aggressively pro-privatization? What…
A: You’re right, you’re right and all these things that you say about Buhari and the APC are true or correct. But don’t ignore or underestimate the important differences, the consequential distinctions between the Right and the Centre-Right, especially in the context of the desperate or even needless tragic conditions for the vast majority in a country like ours and indeed in all the developing nations and regions of the world in which the promise, the dream of transforming the national economy into a middle-income economy more or less permanently remains a dream while the few wealthy get wealthier and wealthier and the poor get poorer and poorer. There is no certainty, definitely no absolute certainty that things would get better under a center-right party like the APC because this depends on many other factors beside ideology. But I believe that it is very crucial that all Nigerians know and take note of this emergent differentiation between the APC and the PDP. Think of it this way, compatriots: no leading political party in our entire post-independence political history has been as vigorously and even as militantly pro-business and pro-imperialist as the PDP under Atiku Abubakar…
Q: Well, okay, you’ve made your point effectively. But how many Nigerians are aware of and really care about this difference in ideology and policy between APC and PDP? And isn’t there a continuum rather than a clean division between the Right and the Center-Right? At any rate, I think that the most important difference between the APC and the PDP in the elections this year is the fact that, for the most part, the solid base of APC is now in the North while conversely, the solid base of the PDP is now in the South. Isn’t that the case? It seems to me that when the APC emerged as a very broad coalition with an impressive national spread in 2014, its main promise was that it was, at last, forging an organic and consequential identity of political interests between the North and the South, especially in relation to the ethical and ideological imperative of the interests of the poor of both regions. That seems to be gone now, no?
A: Well, I am not sure that it is gone for good, gone forever. Please, don’t leave out of account the massively crucial fact that Buhari especially but also the party, fell far short of their promises, their campaign manifestos. In essence, they had a three-point manifesto, both in the 2015 and 2019 elections: security; the economy; the fight against corruption. On the first two – security and the economy – Buhari and the APC performed woefully, so much so that it was nothing short of an outrageous presumption to present these two objectives again as their rallying points in 2019. On security alone, Buhari’s performance between 2015-2019 is quite possibly the worst performance of any Nigerian head of state to date! And on the third leg of their three-legged manifesto – the war against corruption – at best the verdict is mixed and at worst, another failure of the president and his party. Those inclined to give Buhari a passing grade for the war on corruption claim that at the very least, the arrant impunity of corruption during the PDP years is now gone, possibly forever. But I say, not yet and I give the examples of Mainagate and the case of Buhari’s first SGF, Babachir David Lawal and I say, not so fast, impunity of corruption is still very much with us! All the same, I think we should not be over-hasty in pronouncing the end of North-South populist unity under the reign of Buhari’s APC. If the party succeeds in decisively curbing corruption and the recovered loot is put to effect substantial amelioration of the woeful conditions of the poor of the South and the North, then the promise of Buhari’s second coming of 2015 might be revived. At any rate, what I am emphasizing here is a claim that one of the most important differences between the APC and the PDP is a perception, beginning in 2015, that Buhari and his party portend a unity of the North and the South that is based on the identity of the social and economic interests of the poor of both regions in their tens of millions. If that has now been exposed by the 2019 general elections as a mere dream as far from fulfillment now as in 2015, the cause for this is precisely the fact that the things that unite the APC and the PDP are much stronger than the things that differentiate them.
Q: Ah, I can’t wait to hear what you have to say on that point – the things that unite these two bitterly opposed ruling class parties. But before we get to that juncture in this conversation, I would like you to address the specific issue of the increased antipathy towards Buhari and the APC in the three zonal regions of the South-west, the South-south and, especially, the South-east. Does this not indicate a return to the historically big and divisive contention between the South and the North under a charismatic leader whose return to power was premised on, precisely, bringing the North and the South closer together?
A: Yes, unquestionably, it does, it does. Here, we have to be very frank: Buhari is a man, a politician, who is (now) greatly feared and perhaps even despised in many parts of the South. In this respect, it is an understatement to say that his administration has recorded a great failure in security matters; he actually scares the living daylight out of millions of people in many parts of the South – and parts of the North too. How many people in the South would you ask whether or not Buhari is coldly and calculatedly partisan in the destructive clashes between herders and farmers, and how many would tell you, point blank, that the President is an inveterate partisan of the herders? Most, if not everyone that you ask! Of course, the herder-farmer conflicts have a greater complexity than the issue of Buhari’s partisanship, but because he is also known to exhibit strong and undisguised parochial and sectionalist sentiments and ideas in other areas of our national life, the herder-farmer standoff has taken the dimension of a specter for all the other failures of the president and his party. This can be extended to his big electoral problems in the South-east and the South-south: the widespread feelings of marginalization and second-class citizenship in both regional zones of the country had been there long before Buhari’s rise to power. However, they have grown immensely under Buhari – at the same time that his charisma has not failed to produce discernible effects in both regions! Indeed, this point provides us with a way to perceive how and why the things that unite the APC and the PDP are much stronger than the things that separate and differentiate them.
Q; How so? And what are these things anyway? Please be very concrete in your response to this question.
A: Well, I was going to invoke some “theoretical” explanations like the collective project of surplus extraction and primitive accumulation as the most powerfully cohering element among all our ruling class political parties and politicians, but I suppose you will deem that not “concrete”, not clear enough! So, let me put the same explanation in a very concrete formulation: as the president, as a senator, as an honorable, and as a very high public officeholder, ask not what you can do for your country; ask, instead, of what your country can give you for your service to “your people” and your country. That is what unites all our ruling class political parties and politicians. And that is what is known in “theoretical” discourse as primitive accumulation as an elemental force. Do you know the word, “tropism” compatriots? I mean tropism as in hydrotropism, phototropism and geotropism? As the common term in all these three phenomena of nature, tropism is the elemental force that drives all living things to, respectively, water, sunlight and places where we feel rooted, where we feel the force of connection to a place, a locality that we do not feel toward any other place in the world.
Q: Tropism? That is what unites all our ruling class political parties and politicians? And it is stronger than differences over restructuring, over powerful ethnic, regional and religious loyalties and over gender and generational demands for redistribution and restitution?
A: Yes, compatriots, yes. Except that tropism itself comes with a natural, enlightened self-interest that our ruling class politicians do not have. All living things have a tropism that drives them toward the warmth of sunlight and the slaking of thirst by water. But all living things also know that too much of sunlight, too much of water is harmful and potentially destructive. Have you, compatriots, ever come across a Nigerian ruling class politician who feels and acts on the realization that too much of taking from our collective wealth and national assets is harmful, have you?
- Biodun Jeyifo bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu