As the political careers of Lincoln, Churchill and de Gaulle demonstrated, it takes unusual and even cataclysmic circumstances to produce great leaders. Unusual leaders manifest in unusual times. However, when unusual times fail to produce unusual leaders, the society is endangered. It may take a few more years from now and exciting political outcomes before Nigerian historians and political scientists agree on whether the founding of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the turbulence in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) constituted enough grounds for the making of a great Nigerian leader required for the tumultuous times. But whether that leader is revealed or not, in 2015 or well after, there is no denying that Nigeria is ripe for substantial, if not fundamental, change, on account of the great political, economic and social contradictions the country has sadly had to endure in the past one decade or more.
The registration of the APC was itself anticlimactic. Not only was there opposition to its registration by alleged PDP proxies, only few people were sure the leadership of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) could not be compromised by an immoral ruling party. And though it was needless and pointless for the PDP to stymie the registration of APC using the excuse of a dispute over acronym, no one was sure how far the ruling party was willing to go to discomfit the opposition. In the end, common sense prevailed, and a major opposition party was birthed last week. The new amalgamated party, with all the dangers associated with alloys, will hope to exceed both in reputation and achievement the records of its famous predecessors known to us as United Progressives Grand Alliance (UPGA) in the First Republic and Progressive Parties Alliance (PPA) in the Second Republic, notwithstanding the undeniable observation that the circumstances of their births were not too dissimilar.
APC’s final appearance has doubtless met with euphoric responses from citizens harried by more than 14 years of unimaginative PDP rule, and analysts bored stiff by the fundamental staidness of describing rather than analysing PDP victories after every election. Now, pundits will have to earn their money, and citizens can look forward to real politics of issues, competence, geographic, and behavioural considerations. It is not an exaggeration to also say the country may well finally be on its way to a much more realistic and enduring two-party system, one that may ensure political parties work hard for votes and make those votes count. The country can also look forward to a more boisterous and reflective legislature, one the presidency will have to engage more respectfully and more intelligently than it had done so far. Indeed, not only are the possibilities endless, the emergence of the APC could very well be the tonic needed to guarantee the survival of democracy.
Even before considering the prospects of the APC in future elections – and it is perfectly sensible to do so even now – it is necessary to look at the new party itself and assess its architecture. The easiest part is the coming together of the three main constituent parties in the amalgamation, to wit, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP). Staying together will be more challenging; and finding the right formula to win elections will be the most challenging. Once they win power, it is all but evident that they would do considerably and enthusiastically better than the tired PDP.
The hardest part of the amalgamation is how the two leading parties in the coalition – the ACN and the CPC – will subordinate their strong identities to the new party and work towards forging a new character and identity, much stronger and idiosyncratic than their individual moults, and capable of resonating with voters, hammering out realistic and unifying political platforms, and fighting major electoral wars with well-oiled machines. It must be remembered that previous attempts by progressives to reach out to other parties never went beyond reaching an understanding with other parties through the instrumentality of coalitions. This, therefore, is the first time in Nigeria major parties under progressive panoply are fusing together across ideological divides. But progressivism, as all the progressive parties of Southwest origin have repeatedly demonstrated, is much more than merely a convenient vehicle or an ideological or philosophical force; it is a moral force encapsulating superior and almost theological arguments about how societies are founded, organised and governed. A progressive party, like any metal with unique linear expansivity, responds to external stimuli differently from a conservative or pseudo-progressive party by reason of its intrinsic properties.
Despite the unending arguments in the Southwest about the progressive credentials of the ACN, there is little doubt that it is the foremost progressive party in Nigeria, and this is in spite of itself, its unorthodox definition of internal democracy, and its sometimes perplexing succession patterns inherited in part from its regional progenitors, the Action Group (AG) and the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN). Indeed, to restrict the definition of progressivism to its internal democracy mechanism is to miss the more essential attributes of that political ideology as it relates to the pursuit of rapid societal change and protection and advancement of civil rights, among other things. Now, juxtapose both ACN’s positive paranoia on civil liberties and its doctrinaire progressivism with the pragmatism of the CPC on one side and the vestigial conservatism of the ANPP on the other side, and you begin to get a sense of the sacrifices the amalgams will have to make in order to confound the PDP naysayers. It will certainly not be an easy task, especially with both the ACN and CPC having been led by two mercurial personalities.
The reasons the APC was formed must, however, not be forgotten. Its constituent parts seemed to have a foreboding of their impending destruction if they continued to stay disunited in the face of the obtruding PDP. They probably remembered the statement made by Benjamin Franklin before signing the US Declaration of Independence in 1776. He had said: “We must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we shall hang separately.” The APC has chosen to take the American’s counsel, fully conscious of and willing to live with the drawbacks of lying on the same bed with strange fellows and loth to resign themselves to the hopelessness and helplessness of being slaughtered in every election. Surely, they are no gluttons for punishment. I think also that they considered the tantalising prospects of winning the 2015 polls and what great and might things they could in consequence do to reform and transform the country, which mighty things the PDP seems happily and indifferently oblivious of.
If the 2015 polls were held today, and the APC had the good fortune of presenting the right candidate to face the underperforming President Goodluck Jonathan, the result is unlikely to be a close one. Quite apart from the fact that the president’s wife has not exactly been an asset, he has himself comprehensively alienated the Southwest, Northeast and Northwest. As for the North-Central and South-South, he is facing revolt in key, vote-laden parts of the regions, while his hold on the Southeast is only three-quarters sure. To reverse these positions will take a miracle by even the most studious, charismatic and dogged of leaders. But as everyone knows, Dr Jonathan’s main strength lies in his earthy, though often misplaced, candour. That strength unfortunately does not usually translate into votes.
The scenario above assumes both the nomination of Dr Jonathan and the exactitude of the APC fielding a winning ticket. But here, precisely, is the dilemma the APC and indeed the whole country will face in the coming months. How would they draw the balance between what their hearts tell them about the kind of ticket the country needs for strong leadership and rapid, even revolutionary, transformation, though it be unorthodox and unconventional, and what their heads tell them about the kind of conventional-wisdom, religion-sensitive ticket that is in consonance with national pedantry, though it be counterproductive in the long run? It is in the nature of countries never to be able to resolve such dilemmas.
The APC on its own will have to determine how safely it can break the mould and stretch the baffling dynamics of Nigerian politics to its elastic limit. More, it will have to determine what its priority is: to win the next election, even if it entailed a horse dose of hypocrisy, or to provide the kind of fiery leadership that will take Nigeria to the big league. Apart from the fact that these two objectives are often mutually exclusive, history tells us that some of the world’s greatest reformers took power in unusual circumstances thereby freeing them from the strictures that would otherwise hobble a leader produced by normality and conventional democratic apparatuses.
