3 days Ago By Salihu Lukman
Somehow, unknown or unaware to key political opposition leaders, the strength or confidence of President Bola Tinubu is derived from their inability to open themselves and honestly commence negotiation to build a united front ahead of 2027. Key opposition political leaders refer mainly to Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, Mr. Peter Obi and Sen.
Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso. These are leaders who have paid their dues and are still actively nursing ambitions of becoming President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. They were Presidential candidates in the last 2023 election.
If anything, President Tinubu and APC won that election on account of their failure to unite under one political platform. To be fair to them, they all agree that the performance of the President in the last one year since his assumption of office has been disastrous. Unfortunately, their agreement has so far failed short of making them agree to work together towards building a common platform, capable of mobilising and uniting Nigerians towards defeating President Tinubu and APC in 2027.
Their inability to commence proper political negotiations is emboldening Tinubu to continue with his experiment, unperturbed with the harsh reality it has created for Nigerians. It is quite worrisome that notwithstanding the dangers before the nation, our key opposition leaders believe in a businessas-usual approach to politics whereby the most important thing in politics is the management of their personal ambitions to become President. At this point, it is important to appeal to our key opposition leaders to wake up and try to be compassionate and appreciate the gravity of the dare heart situation facing citizens.
The big question is whether on account of personal ambitions, we want to continue to mismanage our reality and sacrifice every opportunity, which the democratic system offers. The opportunity that democratic system offers is that any government, which fails its citizens, should be voted out. No doubt, by any standard, both President Tinubu and APC have failed Nigerians.
It is quite disheartening that a party, which has come with all the promises of changing Nigeria for the better, has ended up ruining the country. From the economy to problems of insecurity and corruption, which were the three cardinal challenges APC and former President Muhammadu Buhari promised to tackle in 2015, what we had then is child’s play today. If with all the trust Nigerians invested in former Buhari and Tinubu ended up producing the disastrous outcome of today’s reality whereby across all shades and divides, we are faced with the current existential crisis, why should any leader be trusted? The hard truth is that both former President Buhari and President Tinubu have turned out to be self-centred and unable to produce the needed leadership to pull the country out of its current challenges.
Certainly, all of us who were actively in support of these leaders never emerged; they will be such colossal failures. With such poignant experience, it is very troubling. Troubling, largely because the basis of political relations with these leaders was limited to supporting their personal ambitions to become President.
Once they achieve that they turn out to lack the humility and respect for subordinates. They failed to consult and even destroyed all structures for consultations, including demolishing structures of the party that made it possible for them to achieve their personal ambitions. We have moved from being opposition politicians to becoming a ruling party since 2015.
Sadly, as a ruling party, we have become worse than the PDP we defeated in 2015. Unlike in the days of the PDP that allowed for opposition parties to function, we are today confronted with the ugly and depressing reality whereby all the opposition parties are being manipulated into a deeper crisis of existential nature. For instance, the PDP has a Trojan horse in former Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike who is holding the party by the juggler and is ready to pull the party down to its political grave of irrelevance.
The Labour Party is marred with internal leadership problems with no end in sight. Although stakeholders of the party met to appoint a caretaker committee, the legality of the action is suspect. The NNPP is having its own share of leadership challenges and somehow only hoping to survive what is clearly an orchestrated attempt by the invincible APC forces to muscle it out of Kano State, its only political hold.
In all these, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, acting through the PDP Governors hope to reclaim the PDP. Mr. Peter Obi and the Labour Party stakeholders with no legal footing want to take control of the Labour Party.
Sen. Kwankwaso is hopeful that he can overcome the APC onslaught against him in Kano. While the common enemy of all of them is the APC, and although conscious to all these leaders, alarmingly, the three leaders still think that they can succeed individually.
I hope I am wrong. But I am increasingly becoming agitated that these leaders will, if not moderated, take us on the same old route of mismanagement due to personal ambitions. The hard truth is that if we allow them to lead us on that route, they have little or nothing to lose.
But as Nigerians, we have everything to lose. What is it that we can do to divert these leaders away from the old route of mismanaged personal political ambitions? Beyond the key opposition leaders, we may perhaps need to put more focus on the second-generation opposition leaders. Who are these second-generation opposition leaders? These are the Yomi Osinbajos, Rotimi Amaechis, Kayode Fayemis, Nasir El-Rufais, Rauf Aregbesolas, Aminu Waziri Tambuwals, Ibikunle Amosuns, etc.
There are also the tendencies of old political leanings such as the old CPCs, the PRPs and the increasingly resurgent SDP. Part of the reality of all these tendencies is their strong loyalty and unpremeditated loyalty to old blocks of leaders, which the key opposition leaders are part of. Their unpremeditated loyalty to the old block is limiting their capacity to initiate organisational drive towards the emergence of an alternative political platform.
More than anything, getting these secondgeneration of opposition leaders to vacate the current disposition of unpremeditated loyalty is the key to unconstrained growth of Nigeria’s democracy. The challenge is how can Nigerians push these second-generation of opposition to work together and unite to produce the desirable alternative political formation that can give and embolden confidence that a better Nigeria is possible once President Tinubu and APC is defeated in 2027? Part of the big hurdle is also that these second-generation politicians are contemptuous with themselves and aggrieved with each other. To that extent, they prefer to live in isolation even if it means living with the danger of continuing the old route that has failed Nigerians.
Like the key opposition politicians, somehow, the second-generation are also insulated by the consequences of failure. Whether Tinubu and APC remain in power in 2027 is not as threatening to the secondgeneration of opposition politicians. This simply highlights the fact of lack of organic connection with Nigerians.
Both the key opposition politicians and the second generation opposition politicians seem to be unconnected with Nigerians, which perhaps is the main reason why despite the realities and dangers facing the nation today, docility is the hallmark of politics in Nigeria. How do we get out of this docile reality? How do we force our opposition leaders to start negotiating a new reality that will unite them and unite Nigerians toward bringing about a new prosperous nation is the big question? From our experience with the APC, Nigerians are not interested in just the defeat of APC and President Tinubu in 2027. Clearly, what Nigerians are interested in is for the defeat of APC and Tinubu to produce a strongly democratic nation that is responsive to the needs of Nigerians.
For that to be achieved requires the emergence of a strong political party that can regulate and direct the conduct of all elected representatives, especially the President of the Federal Republic. Nigerians are wary of just supporting the ambition of any person simply because we are unhappy with the performance of a serving President. What is it that accounts for the failure of APC, former President Buhari and now President Tinubu? What is the absence in the organisation of APC that made it worse than PDP? How can we produce a new party that can overcome the weaknesses of APC and guarantee that elected representatives produced by the new party, including the President will not turn out to be emperors and overlords? How can we have a party that would have the mechanism to manage political competition such that political rivalry is transformed into partnership and team building credentials? Because political competition and rivalry are taken for granted, leaders, including opposition politicians are indulging themselves with the destructive mindset of relating with each other based on godfather and godson mentality.
Sadly, that is becoming a big albatross even to personal security and safety of political leaders. The second-generation of opposition political leaders are the worst off this reality. The key opposition leaders have had enough sabotage.
The fact is, so long as political relations is solely based on personal political ambitions, the capacity to build Nigerian democracy will be weak and the potential to build a political party that can mobilise Nigerians to defeat President Tinubu and the APC will be a far cry. Above all, Nigeria’s so-called democracy will continue to produce leaders whose worse credentials will only surface after they assume office just like what Tinubu has turned out to be. It is therefore incumbent on both the key opposition leaders and the second-generation opposition leaders to demonstrate some measure of selflessness by commencing open and sincere negotiations towards building an alternative political platform that will change the route of politics in Nigeria.
Once, with all the traps, political and legal experience before the current leading opposition political parties, our key opposition leaders continue to imagine that they can achieve their personal ambitions to win election, it simply means they are incapable of developing Nigerian democracy and make it capable of resolving the nation’s challenges. And so long as the second-generation opposition remained beholden with their unpremeditated loyalty to the key opposition leaders, they are as complicit as the key opposition leaders..
