By Ochereome Nnanna
When a woman marries twice, she is better placed to know which husband treated her better. As a country, Nigeria has married two husbands since 1999: the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and the All Progressives Congress, APC. No doubt, we experienced a far better Nigeria under the PDP than the APC. This claim has nothing to do with partisanship. Whatever evil the PDP committed, the APC regimes have multiplied them tenfold and added fresh, vile inventions of their own.
The PDP was founded by political leaders who tried to use the outcomes of the Abacha Constitutional Conference to build an improved democracy and governance system. The PDP was built on the foundation of equitable power sharing and rotation, as well as the Federal Character Principle enshrined in Section 14(3) of the 1999 Constitution, as agreed at the Conference.
With this, the PDP ruled Nigeria for 16 years. We experienced prosperity and growth in the second term of President Olusegun Obasanjo, successfully avoided the worldwide economic meltdown under President Umaru Yar’Adua, and another prosperity under President Goodluck Jonathan. It was under Jonathan that Nigeria emerged as the largest economy in Africa.
The PDP was definitely not blameless in terms of
corruption and electoral malfeasance. But its success story was built on the
foundation of relative equity. The South-West, North-West, and South-South
benefited from the power rotation formula. The balancing of federal
appointments gave Nigerians a sense of belonging as envisaged by the Constitution.
Under the PDP, no section of the
country was relegated as a result of its failure to vote for presidents. The
South-West rejected the PDP, yet its son, Obasanjo, was supported by the rest
of the nation to emerge as president in 1999 and 2003. Bayelsa is the smallest
state in Nigeria by population, yet its son, Jonathan, was elected president in
2011.
PDP lost its glory as a result
of two factors. By 2011, the party had become so large that it seemed
indestructible. Between 2009 and 2011, the party governed 28 states. In fact,
Obasanjo even forced a membership reregistration exercise in order to weed out
those he saw as “undesirable” elements. The main reason the party fell was
internal divisions. Six Northern governors and those of Rivers State rebelled
against Jonathan. Five of them later joined the upstart APC in 2015.
The reason for the second fall
of the PDP Leviathan was the party’s unwillingness to uphold its cherished
principle of power rotation. In 2022/2023, it was the South- East’s turn to
produce the presidential candidate of the party. But Atiku Abubakar and
Governor Nyesom Wike’s vaulting but elusive presidential ambitions and the
greed of some South-East leaders of the PDP led to the denial of the South-East
a prize they had laboured for to the benefit of other zones. If the party had
united behind Peter Obi in the 2023 elections, it would have been much more
difficult for Mahmood Yakubu’s INEC to award victory to the APC.
APC has failed to make a
desirable impact because of the primary momentum that drove its leaders: power.
Muhammadu Buhari wanted power by all means. He contested the presidency three
times and failed. He even cried publicly and threatened bloodshed. Bola Tinubu
also wanted federal power after pocketing Lagos. He approached Buhari, and they
forged an alliance fuelled by the lust for power. They struck a “turn-by-turn”
agreement.
Tinubu helped Buhari into the
presidential office twice. When it was Tinubu’s turn, Buhari tried to betray
him by bringing someone else to succeed him. When Tinubu outwitted his
political partner and grabbed the APC presidential ticket, Buhari tried to use
the federal might against him. But he eventually gave him the full support of
Mahmood Yakubu’s INEC and the state agencies of coercion. Tinubu achieved his
ambition of becoming Nigeria’s president.
The APC regimes of Buhari and
Tinubu have no regard for equity or constitutionality. They have personalised
power. Buhari made it clear he would favour those who voted for him. Since his
main support came from the North, he inserted Northerners, especially his core
loyalists, in most of the juicy, lucrative, and powerful offices. His
apologists applauded him, saying he needed to work with people he knew and
could “trust”.
What did we get in Buhari’s eight years? Unlike the PDP’s two peak moments of prosperity, we had two recessions under Buhari’s nepotistic, incompetent and draconian rule. His kinsmen and core loyalists, whom he surrounded himself with, failed to help him produce results. Rather, they stuffed their pockets without fear of retribution.
Buhari’s family
member, Hadi Sirika, publicly boasted that the APC had the money to “win” the
2023 elections. His Attorney General, Abubakar Malami, also bragged in a video
shared by the People’s Gazette and published on many media platforms: “They
have been reporting that we shared over 200 Mercedes-Benz cars; if Allah gives
us the opportunity, we will share hundreds of airplanes, not just cars”.
Today,
Malami, who handled the Abacha loot repatriations, is a free man, as are the
rest of the Buhari parasitic crowd.
Under Tinubu, the same pattern is emerging. This shows it is an APC thing. Buhari’s nepotism was often coined as Fulanisation. Some have similarly monikered Tinubu’s emerging formation as Yorubanisation. But I think it goes beyond tribalising the Federal Government.
It is more of a tinubuisation. Tinubu has
put all the “heavy” portfolios – Petroleum, Army, Police, Customs, FIRS,
Finance, Justice/Attorney General, CBN, Communications, Solid Minerals, Blue
Economy, and a host of others – in the hands of his core loyalists and Lagos
and Osun kinsmen. The federal character provision is trashed.
*Nnanna is a commentator on public issues
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