Although 2015 is three years away, in Nigeria the battle for the soul of the crises-torn nation is on and opposition parties have resolved this time around to flush out the ruling PDP form the Aso Rock. But could they be taken serious at all? BAYO OLADEJI asks
The rat race to the Nigerian equivalent of the American White House and the British 10 Downing Street has begun even though the realignment of forces would still take place before then but the signals coming from the opposition have shown their readiness to once and for all put an end to what they describe as “PDP, the nightmare of the country”.
Nocturnal meetings have begun, in Lagos, Abuja, Kaduna and some state capitals as the opposition moves to the roundtable strategizing how to give the ruling party a run despite the fact that the party manages the country’s depressed economy that has returned to the wood in the last few months.
The gang up involved the leading opposition parties namely, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and the All Nigerian People’s Party (ANPP) and some lesser ones that are expected to team up as the days for the next general election draw closer.
Those on this list include but are not limited to the Labour Party and the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) who are currently romancing the ruling party being the junior partners in the alliance that is ruling the country.
It was the spokesman of the ACN, Lai Mohammed that first let the cat out of the bag when he disclosed that the opposition were meeting with a view to kicking the PDP out of power come 2015 and he assured the cynical public that this time around they will get it right.
Speaking in the same vein, the Osun State governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbsola called on the opposition to create an alliance that would lead to the deliverance of the country from the claws of the PDP. He reminded them at a lecture he recently delivered in Minna that the danger in having opposition on vacation when behemoths like PDP is in power.??
“When opposition is squashed, democracy becomes a facade for tyranny. Our democracy is poorer for this and the cause of our people has since suffered untold neglect. If only the PDP will commit a fraction of its efforts at destroying opposition on providing governance, our country will be better for it,” he said.
He made this view while delivering a speech at the Democracy Day Lecture/Merit Award organized by the Niger State Chapter of the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP) at the UK Bello Art Theatre, Minna.
The Governor, who was represented by the Commissioner for Urban Development, Land and Physical Planning, Mr. Muyiwa Ige, said the future of the country belongs to the opposition and that it is incumbent on them to unite and be more focused in the task of building Nigeria’s democracy.
Aregbesola held that, “It is incumbent on opposition parties to unite and be more focused on the task ahead. The future of Nigeria belongs to them if they can take a good grasp of today and play that role very well. Given our precarious situation, it is only the opposition that can save Nigeria.
“There is a need for them to unite, have a broad coalition and put up a common front against the common enemy, especially in each party’s area of influence. This could be in form of granite or concrete coalition or outright merger, in the greater interest of our country,” the governor noted.
He also noted that Nigeria’s democracy has floundered because the opposition has not played its essential role, adding that if the PDP for instance had its way, there would be no opposition parties in Nigeria.
This is also the position of the ANPP when its National Chairman, Dr. Ogbonaya Onu recently in Abuja urged the opposition parties to unite in order to stop President Goodluck Jonathan from seeking re-election in 2015. He, however, admitted the difficulty in achieving this goal. He recalled the failed alliance between the ACN and the CPC during the last general election when the plan collapsed on the eve of the presidential poll.
Onu said, “We should not be pessimistic. We cannot say because such an alliance had failed in the past, we should now fold our arms and allow the PDP to mess up the country. Yes, it (the alliance) is difficult, but we are not disturbed by such difficulties.
We want to build trust and confidence and that is why we are meeting ahead of time. It is in the interest of the nation that we succeed in the alliance talk. The current situation should not be allowed to continue”.
He disclosed that the chairmen of the opposition parties would continue to meet because “we know that the outcome of our meetings would yield fruitful result at the end”. He said the ANPP, like other opposition parties, was worried about the situation in the country.
He explained further, “The party, like other well-meaning Nigerians, is worried at the direction the President is taking the country to. The PDP has been in government at the centre for the past 13 years and there is no real improvement. This is why we are asking Nigerians to give other political parties like the ANPP the chance to lead them”.
In his weekly column a defeated presidential candidate in the last election, Otunba Dele Momodu also made a similar call even as he bemoaned the second term agitation for President Goodluck Jonathan whom he argued has not justified the mandate given last year.
He stated, “Three clear years to our next ritual of rarefied elections, debate is already raging and those who have not been able to fix 80 percent of our outlandish problems are already dreaming of re-election. Is it not the height of insult that anyone can be thinking of 2015 elections when no one is even sure of the status of our nation by then? This can only happen in a nation of rabid gamblers.
“Forget about the feeble denials from Aso Rock villa, President Goodluck Jonathan will run when tomorrow comes. In Nigeria, no promise is ever too sacred that it can’t be reversed. No agreement is too sacrosanct that it can’t be broken by those who came to power by dishonouring such agreements in the first instance.
A bad precedent had already been set and there’s nothing strange about continuing the tradition. There are more than enough spin-doctors angling for the job of defending the wilful murder of their own zoning formula. Read my lips: ‘2015 is not my priority translates to it is not important to me at this moment when you folks know I will contest anyway’. I’m a student of language and linguistics; there is no other meaning to that semantic”.
“This government will suffer cardiac arrest the day Buhari joins forces with many brilliant Nigerians at home and abroad to form a water-tight opposition. There is no point going through the same rituals and allowing these political vampires to run away with cheap victory.
Nigeria is haemorrhaging to death and it would require all the selflessness on the part of opposition leaders to take our nation back from reckless gamblers. The time has come for us to join our hands and legs to fight a common enemy. The level of retrogression in Nigeria is totally unacceptable in this modern world. And there’s no better time than now when everyone is looking for a supernatural intervention”.
Having reviewed the effect of the maladministration of PDP on the populace even as he warned the party and its chieftains to learn from history the process that usually leads to revolution, the Publisher, Ovation magazine called on the opposition to mobilize all the victims of the PDP misgovernance with a view to turning them into an electoral army that would flush the PDP out of the water closet of the country.
But the PDP is battle ready for the opposition as its chieftains are sure of crushing any opposition on its way come 2015. In its swift reaction to the plot against the party come 2015, the party has dismissed the move with a wave of hands cited the historical antecedent of such a move. Former acting National Chairman of the Party, Alhaji Abubakar Baraje, reportedly said the party will demolish “all alliances and attempts” by the opposition to defeat the PDP in future elections in the country.
According to him, “It is not new. We are all living witnesses to the kind of gang-up that came up in 2011 when we were preparing for the 2011 general election, it is not different. The gang-up came up in 2003; the PDP demolished the gang-up. It came up in 2007, it was demolished and in 2011, they were demolished. So, even if they are preparing for 2015, it is going to be a fruitless effort. The gang-up is nothing as far as PDP is concerned. It is only giving PDP further strength”.
According to reports, there is now a renewed romance between the ACN and CPC which seems not to have ruffled the feathers of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, with its national publicity secretary, Olisa Metu, waving it off as a distraction to the party’s commitment to transform Nigeria.
The last effort at an alliance of the two parties before the 2011 presidential election hit the rocks due to irreconcilable differences between the leadership of the two parties. What fuels this speculation was the meeting between General Muhammadu Buhari and the National Leader of ACN, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu in Lagos recently.
According to some sources, certain stalwarts of the two parties are considering the viability of the Buhari candidacy with the ACN national leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, as running mate in the next poll.
Furthermore, the sources speculated the Buhari-Tinubu ticket come 2015 with a view to forging a political alliance between the North and the West. This was the initial plan last year when Buhari reportedly kicked against such a ticket on religious ground haven been tagged a religious fundamentalist. Eventually Nuhu Ribadu was asked to step down for Buhari but his running-mate, Pastor Tunde Bakare stood his ground against withdrawing for an ACN chieftain instead.
If he runs in 2015, Buhari would have contested the presidency for a record four times since 2003 when he first took part in the presidential race on the platform of the All Nigeria Peoples Party. In the run up to the 2011 election, he stated that the contest will be his last, but in recent months speculation has been mounting that he may once more throw his hat into the ring come 2015.
Though Buhari is yet to take a clear stand on whether he would contest the 2015 presidential election, saying that he will continue to play an active role in the polity, but not a few political watchers regard his warning to PDP not to rig the 2015 election otherwise there will be bloodshed, as a pointer that he might take another shot at the presidency.
But the likes of Dele Momodu would advise Buhari to let the younger elements be as he remain in the background strategizing for them. Whether this would be acceptable is not yet visible. Related to that is the internal crises within his party which has lead to the suspension of its National Chairman, Prince Tony Momoh and a few other national officers but Momoh led exco has refused to take such a decision serious.
Although the spokesman of the party sees this as the handiwork of the PDP but some believe it has to do with some forces within the party who do not want Buhari to run again instead they are calling for a younger elements like Mallam Naisr el-Rufai instead but most people strongly believed Buhari is the lifeline of the party and if Buhari is pushed aside, the party will disentegrate.
This clique is also asking Tinubu to step aside for the governor of Lagos state, Babatunde Raji Fashola whom they see as a political asset more than his principal.
Related to this is the cold war between the CPC and its former ally, ANPP which Buhari had used to contest for the presidency twice but the party dumped him when least expected and this forced the former Head of State to float his own party.
The unanswered question is would the opposition parties would be able to reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable differences before the next election?