The June 9 National Assembly showdown, in which All Progressives’ Congress (APC) rebel elements routed the party’s official choices, underscores the eerie parallel between the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP) of the still-birth 3rd Republic and APC.
In the face of conservatives’ clear failure in governance, SDP and APC dangled the progressive charm (Nigeria-speak for left-of-centre welfarist ideology); and both struck a chord among the longsuffering electorate.
Both were cobbled together, but in different circumstances.
SDP, by a hectoring Ibrahim Babangida military presidency, which sly transition programme wanted to sell Nigerians a pig in a poke. With the IBB junta rejecting all freely formed political bodies as registered political parties, but imposing own SDP (“a little to the left”) and National Republican Convention (NRC — “a little to the right”), the legacy People’s Solidarity Party (PSP) and People’s Front (PF) forged a somewhat forced union.
And APC, by a sinking but arrogant ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which forced a free merger, among no less than four opposition political parties — the first successful fusion (as distinct from electoral alliance) in Nigerian political history.
Coming together were Bola Tinubu’s Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Muhammadu Buhari’s Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), much wilted All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP) and a faction of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), led by Imo Governor, Rochas Okorocha. A faction of the disintegrating PDP, which dubbed itself the New PDP (nPDP), would later join the merger, with the defection of five PDP governors.
What happened on June 9 was, therefore, the legacy segments fiercely battling for the APC soul.
At SDP, the wrong elements captured the party’s soul. This was clear from how the SDP national executive traded away its 12 June 1993 presidential mandate, which Chief MKO Abiola won. The crisis that followed the reckless annulment of that election forced Nigeria to its knees.
Has APC made a better choice than SDP, with the extant balance of forces? Time will tell.
But back to SDP. PSP, a bastion of Western Nigeria Awoists with friends nationwide, fused with PF, the late Shehu Musa Yar’Adua’s sole power machine. Though PF had cells nationwide, it was fiercely supported too by young, upwardly mobile professionals from Western Nigeria. In this group was a certain young Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Though these “new breed” politicians shared the Awo progressive ideals (as reportedly Gen. Yar’Adua; as he was reputed to have initiated an Awo-Northern elements rapprochement for the 1983 presidential election), they were loath to queue behind the ageing Awo establishment, with their alleged penchant to impose candidates.
So, when elections into SDP offices came, the richer and more cohesive PF swept the posts, even if, to PSP, they were the smaller partners. That in itself was not bad.
The tragedy, however, would come with the June 12 annulment crunch. Yar’Adua, the PF leader, must have felt MKO’s mandate annulment (though after a presidential election) had cancelled out his own putative SDP presidential candidacy (a process IBB also arbitrarily cancelled), so SDP could start on a clean slate by embracing IBB’s dubious Interim National Government (ING), pending the conduct of another election!
Though Yar’Adua would die in prison from the political complications that arose from the June 12 crisis, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar would carry on the PF banner, albeit under another name, People’s Democratic Movement (PDM). But in parting ways with PF during the June 12 crisis, Asiwaju Tinubu would find his own political life. Ironically, both Atiku and Tinubu were involved in the June 9 showdown.
So, was the APC’s then an eerie reincarnation of the SDP power struggle? Not exactly. Yes, June 9 was a fierce struggle for APC’s soul. But no, the details were much different.
For starters, SDP self-aborted after winning power, but before forming government. The APC excitement is coming after it has formed government, but before delivering on its campaign promises.
Still, the root would appear a tactical mistake of not appearing to accommodate elements of the nPDP and Governor Okorocha’s APGA faction, in sharing the National Assembly offices. Heretofore, ANPP provided the chairman in John Odigie-Oyegun (though popular sentiments have it that he got the post less because of his party but more by his personal integrity), CPC produced the presidential candidate in President Buhari and ACN, the vice-presidential candidate in Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.
Somehow, Tinubu’s hands were seen in all three; as in the party’s endorsement of Ahmad Lawan for Senate president and Femi Gbajabiamila, as House of Representatives Speaker. Mr. Gbajabiamila though, as former minority leader, had built a robust pro-people profile, at the height of PDP rule.
The Tinubu camp maintains, with the SDP experience, the former Lagos governor only wanted APC legislative chieftains to be trusted hands; to deliver swift legislative support for the party’s campaign promises. Even then, the APC preferred candidates both belonged to the CPC/ACN tendencies. That not only united Tinubu’s enemies, inside and outside APC, it also lent the APC national leader to combustible allegations of wanting to “corner” the party and “encircle” the president.
At the end, the nPDP bloc installed their own as parliamentary chiefs: Bukola Saraki as senate president and Yakubu Dogara, as Speaker.
But that came at the hideous allegation of treachery — Saraki virtually trading off his own APC faction for bulk PDP support, that somewhat echoed the 19th century Ilorin Alimi-Afonja betrayal; and even Senator Saraki’s own political regicide with his late father, the Oloye.
What is more? The emergence of Ike Ekweremadu, totem of the Saraki-PDP trade-off as deputy senate president, has given the South East a toe-hold in a government they massively voted against. Though that might gall emotionally, it is not necessarily bad, with good faith.
But from Senator Ekweremadu’s triumphalist crowing after, that seems unlikely. Besides, any attempt to tell loyal South East APC elements that in Ekweremadu they have had their quota, would lead to massive restiveness and discontent. Both might, in due course, come back to haunt Saraki — and the ruling party.
The APC balance of forces right now? It is a CPC/ACN executive versus an nPDP legislature, with ANPP as party chair! For institutional check-and-balances, that would appear not so bad — again, if there is good faith. But why would a wounded PDP want APC to succeed?
If the APC threat to “deal with” rebel elements drives the Saraki coalition further into the subversive warmth of the old PDP, then the Buhari Presidency could not have made a worse start. But with good faith and common sense on both sides, the party’s tactical error need not lead to strategic doom.
Unfortunately, common sense is not so common — not among emotive and feuding politicians!
Still, let both sides of the divide know. After June 12 and the hash the PDP made of the post-1999 Army Arrangement, the Buhari Presidency is the best electoral recipe to get Nigeria back on track, sans a radical constitutional re-tinkering to reconstruct Nigeria, on radical federal lines.
If Buhari fails, it would be more than a failed government. Indeed, it would be the final failure of a troubled country — with all the dire consequences.
‘After June 12 and the hash PDP made of the post-1999 Army Arrangement, the Buhari Presidency is the best electoral recipe to get Nigeria back on track’
