The current fad in the polity is the need to create a mega-party to challenge and defeat the PDP in the next set of elections in 2011.This is a dangerous move. It will hand a propaganda coup to the PDP and its apologists, because this exercise is bound to fail. Most of the so-called parties are essentially shelf parties. The PDP will buy them and they will be its proxies in the talks. They will act as its fifth columnists to scuttle any such effort. If sitting governors elected on the platform of other parties will defect to the PDP, custodians of paper parties are unlikely to hold out.
A second danger is that the proponents of this effort are also unwittingly making the following assumptions:
1. That the PDP is a popular party,
2. That the PDP did actually win popular vote in both the 2003 and 2007 elections.
3. That there will be free and fair elections.
How did the opposition elements entrap themselves to this mind set? Otherwise, they should know that you do not need a mega-party to defeat the PDP in any election properly conducted. Just consider this.
This is a party that has been in government both in the centre and almost all of the states for the last ten consecutive years. A decade that saw the country blessed with unprecedented revenues accruing to the treasury, not due to any effort of the government, but from proceeds of the sale of oil which happens to be under our land and sovereign waters, explored and exploited neither by our technology nor expertise.
This is the same period when Nigerians have never had it so very bad. Every index of human development has gone down. Our people are dirt poor. All indices of criminality have shot up in both the public and private sectors.
In terms of policy, what has passed off as reform is essentially asset stripping of public institutions that created instant billionaires with two places in the Forbes List. Transcrop has been reduced to barely managing a hotel with a monopoly of public sector market. No effort is required. They have failed to manage NITEL. The result is an unproductive and uncreative crony capitalism.
The most important aspect of our economic policy is the monthly sharing of oil revenues among the three tiers of government, which are promptly stolen at the state and local government levels, without any fear. Although there are some refreshing green shoots in Lagos. At the Federal level relate the expenditure to the state of our roads and power, except for Abuja where there was transformational impact, regrettably even this is fading. At the level of public service, all that matters is the distribution of offices on ethnic, religious and regional basis. Public office is dispensation of patronage, not a call to duty. Competence and professionalism have no place. Ask Bello Suleiman.
In the last ten years, the government has only been serving the interest of some charming rogues in the private sector and public office holders in the executive and legislative arms, with the civil servants facilitating the scam and, in the process, more than helping themselves. INEC, the security services and the judiciary are handsomely rewarded for rigging elections, facilitating the rape of the electoral process and suppressing the people and conferring ‘legitimacy on fraud’. People don’t matter. The government is in power not as a result of their will or consent. The whole world has borne testimony to this, except the legendary insular Kutigi. Votes don’t and won’t count.
So what will a mega-party do? Are the proponents of such a party assuming that the President, having rejected the recommendations of a committee he set himself, appoint an independent person to chair INEC? It is safe to assume that he is likely to appoint somebody who will announce the results while voting is still going on or results being collated, declaring him a winner. Once this is done, the security services are at hand to clamp down on any form of agitation.
The job of the security services is made easy because emirs and bearded Mallams are at hand to decree that it is un-Islamic to challenge the will of Allah. The judiciary will once again confirm the result. The super-rich will provide the funds for spin and art of lying that goes on as propaganda in a complicit media. The European Union, British Foreign and Commonwealth office and the US State Department will make the statutory declaratory statements of displeasure and promptly increase the search for oil in the Niger-Delta. The Chinese make no pretentions about democracy, they will buy oil and dump sub-standard goods on us.
The Economist and the Financial Times will make some typically British cynical and sarcastic comments and promptly come to organize international conference in Nigeria to underline the confidence of the international business community in the country, which will be interpreted to mean sanctioning the fraud. Meanwhile in the Weekly Economic and Financial indicators published by the Economist newspaper, Nigeria only features when the measurement is on poverty and corruption. The Financial Times also promptly sends a team to produce a special report on Nigeria. For most countries these reports are just about 4-6 pages. In our case, it will be up to 24 pages, more than three-quarters is advertisement. The oligarchs are at hand to underwrite the expenses and place advertisements. The Pearson Group will make a handsome profit, they know how to make fools part with their money.
Against this background, is it not, as they say, like a second wife, to wish for a triumph of hope over experience, to expect that there will be free and fair elections, which is the only basis for electoral contest. A party that is not willing to have internal democracy, is not about to allow a free or fair context.
At their next meeting, let the opposition consider the following five – point agenda two short of the government’s 7-point agenda:
i. Is the President likely to appoint an independent person to chair INEC, a person who will insist the elections will be conducted in accordance with the law?
ii. That the Emirs and Mallams will not engage in satanic interpretation of the Holy Quran, that fraud, poverty, injustice and inequity are not from God.
iii. The security services will remain neutral and professional
iv. The international business and political community will pay more than lip-service
v. In the event of a disputed election there will be good and courageous judges at the Supreme Court who will over-rule themselves and pronounce that a candidate cannot be declared a winner without INEC producing the election results as was held in 2003 or as in 2007, and that elections could not be said to have taken place without legal ballot papers.
If they can answer all the above in the affirmative, then it will be for the opposition to lose the next election. If they affirm their faith in the system, they should go ahead with the meetings in Abuja, Lagos and Kaduna and prepare a common platform for the 2011 elections.
If they don’t believe that it is likely to have an independent and incorruptible INEC, neutral and uncompromised security services and judiciary, they are best advised to have faith in the people and not to waste time on the formation of a mega-party. They should rather engage in mass campaign of public enlightenment and organization to secure popular base to create a mass movement, that will be ready to reject imposition of unelected governments and revolt against poverty, injustice and oppression. BBC a Karkara has provided the awareness and opportunity to embark on such exercise. To educate them that contrary to what the Emirs and Mallams tell them, the mass misery afflicting them is not from God, but is as a direct result of the incompetence and corruption of their so called leaders.
This exercise, contrary to meetings in cosy homes and offices, requires hard work, effort, commitment and above all faith in the people. There is no royal ride to success. The people properly enlightened, educated, mobilized and adequately led will reject and revolt against a situation that has all but enslaved them and condemned them to poverty. Sardines do not applaud their can.
Malam Abba Kyari, former MD, United Bank for Africa, lives in Kaduna.
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