*Photo R-L: Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Mr Peter Obi*
There is some level of consensus about the idea that Nigeria’s opposition political parties are somnolent. This condition results in listlessness, silence or speaking without coordination or even what, in common parlance, is called ‘not knowing what one is saying’. According to the 31 October, 2024 editorial of the Guardian titled, “For a resilient and disciplined political party system,” there is “the propensity for opposition parties to slip into coma and disarray once they lose an election and fail to form government, becoming weak, rudderless and unable to project alternate policy options to those offered by the government of the day.” The editorial then admonishes the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the foremost opposition party, “to wake up and put its house in order.”
Similarly, a story tellingly titled “PDP sleep-walks as opposition goes into oblivion,” in the 18 August, 2024 issue of BusinessDay noted: “[Except] only former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, who seems to be a lonely voice from the party against the APC, other leaders appear to be in a slumber or in bed with the ruling party. There is hardly any strong opposition with constructive or disruptive views. Since the end of the last elections, the opposition political parties have gone to sleep, leaving the ruling APC and the federal government to ride roughshod over Nigerians.”
Veteran media personality, Mr. Tonnie Iredia, had also remarked, in a 30 June, 2024 article titled, “Unending weak political opposition in Nigeria,” in the Vanguard: “Only Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi who were the candidates of [PDP and Labour Party] respectively [in the 2023 presidential elections] have been the ones speaking or making any move that provides some evidence that they may contest again; thereby turning opposition politics into a personality affair. Not much is done in what should have been a daily robust evaluation and analysis of government policies item by item that can push office-holders into retracing some of their steps or be cautious of their next move.”
A 28 September, 2024 story by Emmanuel Oladesu, titled “Nigerian opposition in disarray,” in The Nation posits: “[The] Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), and Labour Party (LP) – are currently in disarray. Public servants elected on these platforms jump ship at will. They hide under the crisis rocking their parties to defect to the ruling party instead of building an effective opposition. … Four reasons are responsible for the escalation of crisis in the three parties. These are the absence of unifying ideas beyond the aspiration to hijack power, poor adjustment to limiting conditions of opposition platforms outside government, lack of effective leadership that commands respect and weakness of crisis resolution mechanism that has made reconciliation impossible.”
In the absence of intellectual rigour, Nigeria’s opposition parties lapse into the less-mentally-demanding option of political insults, and President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has been their target of choice. The President has been demonised so much that, ironically, heroic elements of his personality begin to shine out brightly. At the same time, the chimera they have created in their imagination about him is beginning to cast real fear into the hearts of the opposition and their associates. This fear is manifested in the ongoing obsession with the presumed Tinubu and APC schemes to create a one-party state.
It is interesting to note, in this regard, a 4 November, 2024 interview granted by foundation PDP member and elder statesperson Sule Lamido, former Governor of Jigawa State and former Minister of Foreign Affairs, to Trust TV’s Manir Dan Ali. In it, Lamido said: “Do you know Tinubu at all? … God save you if you don’t know him. … I know his capacity. … I mean his capacity, sagacity, the skill. This is somebody who can manipulate anything to get what he wants. So, fear him.” Lamido went further: “He schemed and survived. … Against all institutions, historical institutions, against all formations, against ACF, against Ohaneze, against Afenifere, against everything.”
Lamido continued: “The [present] government is essentially owned by him. … With Tinubu in that place [Presidency] now, if you look at his history, no Nigerian leader has been there on his own. … They are all coming from institutions or a constituency. … But Tinubu is his own personality. There is neither constituency today nor institution that can say I made Tinubu.” With the seeming desire on the part of Sule Lamido to portray Tinubu uncomplimentarily and the seeming inadvertent portrayal of the President heroically, Manir Dan Ali asked rhetorically: “Isn’t that [set of qualities] a novelty to be celebrated rather than derided?”
Due to the inability or unwillingness to take responsibility for their failures, some members of the opposition ascribe the problems in their parties to machinations by President Tinubu and the APC. For example, in an 18 October, 2024 Guardian story titled “APC accused of meddling ahead of 2027 polls as PDP, LP reel from internal crises,” the National Chairman of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), Ajuji Ahmed, was reported to have said: “The APC is doing everything possible to win the 2027 general election. Indeed, there is evidence everywhere that they are interfering with the other parties.” Moreover, in a 16 October, 2024 Arise News interview, Kola Ologbondiyan, former National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, alleged that “they” have “put fire” in the NNPP, LP and PDP, thereby creating “a dangerous trend” towards reducing Nigeria to a “one-party state.”
The individual efforts at performing opposition duties, which parties have left undone, have opened the parties to bearing responsibility for the unsalutary aspects of those individuals’ antecedents. For example, Atiku Abubakar has worsened the fissures in the PDP by refusing to respect the zoning provision of the party’s constitution which required a Southerner to be fielded as presidential candidate for the 2023 elections. Rather inconsistently, he has been reported to have proposed a revision of the nation’s constitution to provide for rotational presidency. This is not reassuring about his potentials to respect the rule of law, if he becomes president.
In addition, in what amounts to a serious level of indiscretion, Peter Obi, seemingly the most vocal opposition figure, stoked ethnic controversy by alluding to the Tinubu presidency: “It’s our turn. He’s a Yoruba man. Ask the people in Ogun here, is there any place where you people buy bread cheaper? I can follow you and buy one.” Meanwhile, Obi’s own major basis of joining the presidential race was that it was time for Igbo presidency. Ironically, some prominent Yoruba leaders such as former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Pa Ayo Adebanjo were among the most vociferous champions of Ibolokan (‘It’s the turn of Igbos’) during the campaigns. Doyin Okupe, a Yoruba man, who is a former Director-General of Obi’s presidential campaign committee took exception to Obi’s ethnic taunts, which surely are not an endearing course of action for an aspiring president.
To be evenhanded, it would have been nice for Peter Obi to taunt Igbos for voting massively for his Labour Party in Abia State in 2023, within the broader context of the idea that it was time for Igbo presidency. Igbo pensioners in that state governed by Peter Obi’s party have been intimidated and manipulated into signing government-produced documents which purport inhumanely that the pensioners had agreed to forfeit their many months of unpaid pensions. The acquiescent silence of Peter Obi and indeed the opposition in general in the pension travesty in that state is not the way to earn electorate trust. Is the callousness with which Igbo pensioners are currently being treated in Abia State an indication of what awaits Igbos generally, should Obi become president?
Peter Obi has also upset his religious base. For the 2023 elections, Obi frequented churches, and exhorted them: “Church, wake up, take back your country.” He also framed his presidential contest as a religious war. However, in a currently trending video, Obi linked the widespread presence of churches with unproductiveness, and declared: “We’re going to turn night vigil to night shift, so that people can be productive.” Some of his religion-motivated supporters have expressed anger at this seemingly hypocritical declaration. This worrisome inconsistency and ficklesomeness are not reassuring for the over 200 million Nigerians who desire a stable leader.
Furthermore, Obi said as follows in a speech to Nursing School students, as reported in the 11 November, 2024 issue of Daily Post: “I have always told the Nursing Council not to restrict you people from travelling abroad after graduation. If it is not going to work for you here, go to where it will work for you. … If you want to seek greener pastures outside, please go. I’m sure that when we build a greater Nigeria, you will come back.” This is a pedestrian and superficial understanding of the current Nigerian condition. It suggests that Peter Obi doesn’t believe that the students or youth have the capacity or the responsibility to contribute to making the country better, and is rather promoting escapism. This certainly is not a reassuring feature of opposition leadership promise.
Moreover, when the Supreme Court delivered its 11 July, 2024 judgement boosting local government autonomy, there was jubilation across the nation. So far, the two governments which seem to have taken the most hostile steps against that widely-popular, constitutionally-backed and legally-sanctioned local government autonomy initiative of the ruling APC national government are the opposition PDP-controlled Oyo State government and the opposition APGA-controlled Anambra State. Their anti-local-government-autonomy moves could signal opposition parties’ disengagement with the electorate, and can scarcely be expected to endear these parties to the voters, especially, at the national level.
Indeed, it appears as if no systematic and workable ideas on solving any of Nigeria’s sundry problems can be credited to the country’s opposition. Nigeria’s current opposition parties thus seem not to know how to get positive attention and build credibility. As the BusinessDay report referred to earlier puts it, “Many observers believe that the current opposition is weak, uncoordinated, and ineffective. Where the opposition parties are not internally polarised, fragmented and compromised, they are very ineffective and incompetent.”
The opposition APC worked hard to defeat the ruling PDP in Nigeria in 2015; the opposition worked hard in Ghana in 2016 to unseat the ruling National Democratic Congress; the opposition worked hard in Liberia in 2023 to defeat the ruling Coalition for Democratic Change; and the opposition worked hard to earn victory over the ruling Botswana Democratic Party in 2024. So, opposition parties don’t get into office through a defeatist phobia for a one-party system, nor do they win elections through dramatising a sense of entitlement, but gain ascendance through concrete, conscientious and consistent hard work. Not recognising these facts would make Nigeria’s present somnolent or somnambulist opposition parties to continue to be unattractive options to the ruling APC.
