One-Party State: Nigerian Political Parties Are Mere Special Purpose Vehicles

 By Olu Fasan

Ostensibly, Nigeria is a multi-party democracy. But in reality, it is a one-party state. Those ululating over the recent gale of defections wrongly assume that there are material differences between Nigerian political parties. Yet, in truth, the prevalence of defections, decamping, cross-carpeting, or name it, only proves that nothing distinguishes political parties in Nigeria.

*Tinubu

Lord Palmerstone, a former British prime minister, famously coined the phrase “there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies but permanent interests” to describe relations between nations. However, Nigerian politicians have appropriated that saying and turned it into the leitmotif of their political culture. Indeed, Bola Tinubu used the phrase in 2014 when he and others were cobbling together the All Progressives Congress, APC, a potpourri of strange political bedfellows who were united merely by a self-serving agenda to seize and share power. “There are no permanent friends or enemies in politics, but permanent friends, ” Tinubu said, without any sense of irony. Politics in Nigeria is all about selfish interests.

Before Babies Begin To Emigrate

 By Adekunle Adekoya

There must be a problem in the land, a very big one. I am not talking about the usual that we have lived with for decades — lack of potable water, epileptic power supply, parlous healthcare system and all that. I am talking about a feeling of disenchantment, perhaps hopelessness, especially among the youths which has fuelled what we now call “Ja pa.”

On the internet, it has trended for a few days now that 266 Nigerian doctors have been licensed to practise in the United Kingdom. In my hood, I noticed that I have not seen some of the younger men with whom I relate for some time. To be candid, I don’t remember having seen any of them since before the election. I asked around. Someone volunteered that the guys after whom I’m asking have joined the Ja pa train. “They left for Canada three weeks ago,” my informant said. I shuddered in disbelief. 

Nigeria: From Detribalisation To Retribalisation (3)

By Matthew Hassan Kukah

Click Here To Read PART TWO 

For the purpose of our reflection, there are those who might be tempted to argue that Nigeria is where she is today because she has allowed ethnicity or tribal differences to get in the way. Those who make this point believe that if only we can get rid of tribalism, that is, become detribalised, all will be well.

But, as I have said elsewhere, the real challenge in addressing this question is to understand and accept that differences in tribe and tongue are not the reason for our monumental failure to build consensus around development, common citizenship and fairness. There are, however, many reasons for this failure, to which we shall now turn.

*Kukah

I have argued that, in the words of Frost, one of our greatest tragedies lies in the consequences of ‘road not taken’. We inherited a regional arrangement that had its pitfalls but if we had the patience we could have finally worked out a system to accommodate us all. Undoubtedly we can still do that. However, a combination of factors took us continuously back to the bottom of the hill where we have remained like frogs in a bucket, unable to either climb out individually or collectively. The greatest tragedy of the nation is that we have not been able to create a common vision of an egalitarian society. In almost every department, the infrastructure that the British created has since fallen into absolute and total decay. A few examples will do: 

The Slaves Of Nigeria

By Femi Fani-Kayode

Many years ago​,​ ​the irrepressible Hausa leader who hailed from Kano and who was the founder of the radical leftist political party called NEPU, Mallam Aminu Kano, said,​ ​“Until the Fulani Emirs are toppled northern Nigeria will not know peace”.

*Femi Fani-Kayode 

History has proved him right. The feudal structure of the north and its deeply conservative ethos has resulted in nothing but retrogression, poverty, disease, radical Islam, terror and killer herdsmen.

Yet the problem goes much further than the north: it extends to the whole of Nigeria. Worse still it has affected the psyche of the Nigerian people and left them with a very low self-esteem.

We have become victims and casualties of our modern history and little more than miserable serfs in a Fulani-controlled artificial, man-made vassal state which deems non-Fulanis as nothing more than the biblical “hewers of the wood” and “drawers of the water”.

In our very own eyes we are nothing and in our hearts we believe that the Fulani are everything. We bow and tremble before them, we jump when they sneeze or express their displeasure and we smile and commend them when they commit all manner of abominable atrocities and slaughter.