Beyond the initial excitement about a possible halt to what many Nigerians feared was a slide into a one party[APC] dominated state, the emergence of the African Democratic Congress as a formidable coalition of individuals from the ruling party and other opposition parties appears to have its momentum dwindling. While it appears that major opposition figures like former vice president Atiku Abubakar, former senate president David mark, presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 presidential election Peter Obi, former governors Nasir El-Rufai, Rotimi Amaechi, Rauf Aregbesola and many other prominent opposition Nigerian politicians have managed to close ranks by coalescing around the ADC, however, beyond their collective disdain for President Ahmed Bola Tinubu, the coalition is gradually unravelling as a chaotic and visionless congregation of angry men of yesteryears whose major grouse is their exclusion from the dining table where the national cake is being shared.
Twenty six years after the transition from military to civil democratic rule in 1999, Nigeria’s nascent democracy has come of age and is in dire need for consolidation so that civil democratic rule can begin to yield the much anticipated dividends in the form of improved welfare and security for the Nigerian people. To achieve this much needed consolidation, political parties are supposed to function as the brainbox of democracy where, the principles, philosophy, policies and ancillary legal instruments are incubated in order to give life to the intendment, spirit and letters of constitution with the ultimate end of achieving the primary responsibility of government; provision of welfare and security for the citizens of Nigeria. Unfortunately, the weakest link in the value chain of Nigeria’s democracy is the political party system. If the political party is supposed to be the brain box of a democracy then Nigeria’s political party system is a corrupted version that is nothing but a multi-purpose vehicle to grab power by all means possible for self and not public service.
The first chance at democratic consolidation in the 4th Democratic Republic came in 2015 when a coalition of political parties merged together under the banner of APC to torpedo the former ruling PDP from power after sixteen years. Sadly, the All Progressives Congress soon became synonymous to ‘’All Promises Cancelled’’ as they not only failed to deliver on their campaign promises but made Nigeria worse than they met it. And by 2023, another opportunity presented itself when a group of Nigerians under the auspices of the Obidient movement supported the Labour Party and its candidates across the country, propelling a hitherto unknown party from obscurity to the third largest party in Nigeria. Again the beneficiaries of this effort in the various arms and tier of government have betrayed the Obidient democratic revolution by accepting the kiss of death by the ruling establishment after entering into an amorous relationship. Consequently, Nigerians have become politically frigid after being serially jilted by political fraudsters. So, for the ADC, it will take much more than fiery statements of condemnation of the ruling APC and President Tinubu to arouse the interests of Nigerians once again to accept their proposal of a better condition than their current abusive and oppressive marriage with the APC.
Just as Nigeria has suffered from bad governance so has it endured acute failure of opposition and Nigerians may not be willing to support an ‘’anybody but Tinubu’’ kind of opposition but will want to know ‘’what but Tinubu’’ is the opposition offering as an alternative. Therefore, it is disappointing that several weeks after the unveiling of the ADC as a coalition of opposition politicians, the party and its chieftains have not been able to put forward any philosophical, ideological and policy alternatives to what the current managers of the Nigerian state are administering. While nobody should be under the illusion that angels will drop from heaven to redeem Nigeria as it will still require the same people in the political space to effect a positive change. But this will have to be a deliberate decision on the part of the opposing political class to turn a new leaf as there comes a time in the life of a nation when its privileged political class will decide that enough is really enough of governance underperformance. And for Nigeria, that time has come and to this end, the ADC congregation of men of yesteryears should not be merely seeking to substitute President Tinubu and his men of today on the dining table where the national cake is being shared.
The first step towards making a clear difference will be for members of the coalition to take the conscious and deliberate step towards committing class suicide, by substituting their personal, partisan and sectional interests with national interest. And this must be clearly demonstrated in the democratic organization of the ADC. The principles of the morality of the rule of law and absolute fidelity to the intendment, spirit and letters of the constitution must now be entrenched and operationalized in the internal processes of the party. And unlike the old order, the structure of the ADC should be organized around economic interests groups in their places of residence away from ethnicity and religion in member’s places of origin. This will signal a paradigm from identity politics with liberal democratic politics and substitute patronage with good governance as the reward system for political participation. And because political outcomes depend a lot on input and processes, the ADC would hold the prospects of repositioning Nigeria on the path of freedom of from deep and endemic culture of corruption that has ravaged Nigeria like a cancerous virus that has impeded the state from providing security and welfare for its citizens.
Rather than throwing tantrums at the ruling party and President Tinubu, ADC leaders should by now be telling Nigerians their alternative policy proposition the removal of petrol subsidy, floatation of the naira and the role of government in the means of economic production. In addition, the ADC must clearly articulate as well as outline how it intends to create the necessary social condition in line with the Fundamental Principles of State Policy as enshrined in the constitution. That the ADC may not end up a chaotic, bitter, caustic and petulant opposition that is hollow, full of sound and fury but offering nothing as alternatives to what President Tinubu and his APC currently offer.