ANAMBRA’S APC AND FALLACY OF CONVICTIONS

Is political party system not a component of representative government, globally? So we have one -party system, two- party system, multi-party system and others. In America, the country after which we modeled our presidential government, the Republican and Democratic parties are the major political parties that hold sway. But what is a political party? It is a congregation of people, who share similar political cum economic ideologies and beliefs. Political parties present candidates for electoral contests in order to gain political power at different levels of government. And a political party ought to have a constitution and manifesto, which will guide its action and regulate the behaviour of its members.

Since the first political party, NNDP, came into being in Nigeria in 1922, party politics has become a constant feature of our political history. In the first republic, we had such political parties as AG, NPC, NCNC, and others. And they had ideologies on which they are founded. The leader of the Action group, and premier of the Western Region, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, espoused the doctrines and teachings of democratic socialism in his treatises and writings. So during his leadership of the Western Region, he implemented welfarist policies that benefitted the masses. Today, the beneficiaries of his free education policy constitute the pool of the Yoruba political elite and the intelligentsia. Some of the first republic politicians participated in the second republic politics that was abridged by the jackboots and brass-hats. And the third republic was still-born owing to the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election by the foxy General Ibrahim Babangida (rtd).

Now, we are in the fourth republic; and over the years, our political culture as well as practice has evolved. It is now money-based. Politics is no longer a contest and harvest of ideas. So a political party in today’s Nigeria is only a vehicle or platform from which a politician can climb to the loft of political power. In Nigeria’s context, a political party is a composition of strange bed-fellows, who are united by their quest and desire to grab political power at any costs at different strata of government. These political parties have no guiding ideologies, not to talk of their members being apostles of them.

Today, only a few political parties can lay claim to being truly nationalistic in outlook. And our politicians who behave in the same way as streetwalkers change political parties as often as belles change their underwear(s) and dresses. They do not set store by political ideologies. And they are actuated and motivated by selfish and ethnic interests, rather than altruistic and nationalistic feelings. Now many former PDP political stalwarts have defected to the ruling APC as PDP has lost political power at the centre? Nigerian politicians are not known for their fidelity to ideologies.

The number of APC members nation-wide has swelled immensely, now. In Anambra State, APC has in its fold some notable and colourful politicians with intimidating political pedigrees and clout. These politicians each have the optimism that he would become APC’s governorship candidate and win the Anambra’s next governorship election. But as the APC, especially the Anambra APC, is a collection of strange political bedfellows, who set store by Machiavelli’s political axioms, it’s likely that the Anambra APC will self-destruct before it can oust Governor Willie Obiano from office. Can members of the Anambra APC subordinate their self interests beneath the party’s collective good? From their life stories and political antecedents, the answer is a categorical no.

More so, the APC’s leadership of Nigeria is a disastrous outing so far. Our national economy has slipped into recession under the leadership of Muhammadu Buhari. And since members of Buhari’s executive cabinet are second-rate, recycled, and tired political leaders and technocrats, they’re at their wit’s end as to how to get Nigeria out of the economic recession and move it forward. If APC, at the national level, cannot take Nigeria to a great economic and technological height, what guarantee do we have that Anambra’s APC can raise the bar of political leadership in Anambra State, if it wins the Anambra’s next governorship election?