The keynote address delivered by Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State has elicited considerable interest and generated comments across the polity. STANLEY NKWOCHA reviews the governor’s position and contrasts it with the situation in the larger polity.
The conference theme was, “Is The Opposition A Serious Alternative In Nigeria?” and the event host was LEAERSHIP Newspapers Group. While Governor Shettima delivered the keynote address, Prof Pat Utomi delivered the lead paper. For the nation’s opposition, it must be stated that since the return of democracy in 1999, their dwindling fortunes has made most opposition political parties court extinction or regression.
Take for instance, the All Peoples Party, which merged with the United Nigeria Peoples Party, UNPP, to give rise to the All Nigeria Peoples Party, ANPP, has seen a total loss of about 6 states out of the nine it accumulated through the period in review.
For parties like the Progressive Peoples Alliance, PPA, their tale can best be described as sad. Whilst it took the two states of Imo and Abia by storm in 2007 general elections, enthroning governors in the two states, the speed with which it rose and shook the polity equally seems the speed with which it experienced internal crisis largely engineered by the PDP. PPA is today sadly missing on the nation’s political turf.
But from LEADERSHIP WEEKEND’s checks the party under its founding arrowhead Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu is regrouping and rebounding. And as it is for the PPA so it is for other political parties that are far below the party in terms of prominence.
Except for the Action Congress of Nigeria,ACN, which has been on a steady rise since 2007, jumping from having two states to a whooping six, no party can clearly say it is the face of opposition in the country as at today! But for the gentle, humble and unassuming Governor Shettima, a former banker, lecturer and a thorough-bred intellectual, it was an opportunity to show a side many didn’t know of the governor of the troubled Borno State. He did it in and in style too, damning the consequences and shooting straightfrom the hip.
Delivering his keynote address through his SSG, Ambassador Ahmed Baba Jidda, on the topic “Is The Opposition A Serious Alternative In Nigeria?”, Shettima threw all manner of punches before agreeing to finally focus on corruption as the bane of opposition in Nigeria. He identified poverty as the major challenge hindering the advancement of opposition parties in Nigeria and that it was the number one threat to any opposition becoming a serious challenger because it replaces ideologies with cash.
The governor said the situation has made votes become objects for the highest bidders, forcing some otherwise patriotic election umpires to act against their conscience to enthrone leaderships at different levels of government whether at the local, state or federal strata. Shettima, who further identified lack of internal democracy as another reason why political parties have continued to face challenges in Nigeria.According to him, this has only resulted in discontentment amongst members thereby brewing crisis and failures as signified by loss of members and factionalisation of parties.
“In the build up to the 2007 and 2011 elections, virtually all the key political parties were guilty of failures on internal democracy.
My party, the ANPP was accused of either imposing or wrongly substituting candidates with the result being a long pre-election and post-election litigation on the governorship tickets of Yobe, Kaduna, Kano etcetera; the CPC which is about 2 or 3 years old was accused of wrongly substituting governorship candidates in Kano, Katsina, Bauchi and Taraba; the ACN was also accused of imposing candidates especially in the southwestern states and the PDP as the biggest party, was accused of committing the most crime against party internal democracy by allegedly imposing or wrongly substituting governorship candidates in Rivers, Taraba, Bauchi, Anambra and a host of others.
“These crimes were known because they involved governorship seats on which those affected ran to the media, one can therefore imagine those that may have been silenced not by persuasion and political negotiation but by the instrumentality of power.
“Though all the parties seem to be guilty at different degrees, most of the feeling of discontent brewing in the country have largely and rightly, I must say, been directed at the ruling PDP at the centre, largely because of the size of the party; the number of seats it controls in parliament as well as the number of states under its control.For the obvious reasons that there is lethal hunger, brutal insecurity, fatal unemployment, crippled education, substandard healthcare and what have you.The list is long and successive leaders share the blame,” Shettima said.
Cautioning on the ‘winner-takes-all system’the governor said the situation has indeed contributed to the depth of frustration in the country since from 1999 the nation’s democratic process has largely been a tale of unfulfilled hopes and the increasing exasperation of the majority of the Nigerian people, adding that this has led to societal ills such as have been seen in Borno, Yobe, Kano, Kogi, Kaduna, with the Boko Haram insurgency. He correctly restated that this is one of the most tragic examples of disconnect between the political elites and the younger generation.
He bemoaned the loss of ideologies amongst political parties attributing it to ‘a very long period of military dictatorship’ as the hurry in the formulation of political parties did not help the polity in this regard.
‘’And as the crises situation has built up, some of these parties bred factions; while newer parties have also emerged. What marks these parties is the incredible similarity not only in their programs, but the manner in which members move through a revolving door from one to the other.
“There are no ideological issues held dear by them; inner party democracy hardly exists; the parties are generally just vehicles of access to power. And because they do not have very grand visions, they have not been able to galvanize the Nigerian people in a grand narrative of development and patriotic exertion. The fact that members of the political elite seemed to have regularly behaved in the same manner, especially in their excesses, meant that there was often little to choose between the political parties,” Shettima said.
Despite the challenges, however, the Borno governor said it is still possible for the opposition to become serious alternative in Nigeria as no matter how rocky and huge the challenges were, they were still surmountable.
“Nigerian electorates are becoming more politically conscious but like I had talked about, we must collectively fight that thick, black, stinky snake called poverty so that no one sells a vote for a meal ticket and this we can achieve through justice, fairness, and equity in our style of governance as opposition public office holders and our internal democraccies as parties so that credible candidates with rooted connection with the ordinary Nigerian are not prevented from carrying our flags to defeat a system Nigerians unanimously desire to replace,” Governor Shettima submitted.
As if to buttress the governor’s assertion, secretary general of the Conference of Nigeria Political Parties, CNPP, Chief Willy Ezeugwu says he agrees in totality with the position of Governor Kashim, saying it was the point blank truth.
“Politicians can continue to deny it, but the truth remains that in this country, politicians are not principled and lack ideology. It is this total lack of ideology that has made them porous and easily gullible as they continue to be patronised by the government in power.
“Again is the winner take-all syndrome of the politics we play in this country. The government at the center takes it all, controlling every facet and instrument of power, thereby reducing opposition members to helpless bunch without capacity to sustain their oppositional bids”, Chief Ezeugwu stated.
As if tagging along with Shettima and Ezeugwu, Labour Party national chairman, Chief Dan Nwanyanwu threw the fire-works in the air, not minding whose ox was gored and announced to a bewildered nation that the PDP owned, controlled and financed 30 out of the 62 parties in place.
Of these, Nwanyanwu said only nine have functional offices in Abuja as stipulated by the electoral laws. While delivering a lecture titled ‘Transformation of Nigeria Politics: The Labour Party Perspective’ at the Institute of the Security Studies in Abuja last weekend, the LP chairman called on the National Assembly to make laws that will punish public officers who deliberately misadvise the government as well as laws that will make electoral fraud impracticable.
Said Nwanyanwu: “Out of the existing 62 political parties in Nigeria, 30 of them are owned by the PDP out of which just nine have functional office in Abuja while the rest of the parties have their offices in their briefcases.
“The best political system for Nigeria is a two party system. Such arrangement will make it difficult for rigging because it is just two parties, there will be no need for anybody to carry ballot boxes because there won’t be such opportunity. Touts will not have jobs and the electoral tribunal will be useless because a clear winner will emerge just as was the case in 1992 general election between the SDP and NRC. The issue of merger or alliance will not arise because it is just two of them and they have different ideologies.”
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