personality namely Chief Bola Ige , that authored the
outline of the constitution of the three political parties that
contested the 1999 general elections. It is true and this is
how it came to be. The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP,
originated as a pan Nigerian anti-military dictatorship
nationalist movement. Farther into the past it started as a
Northern regional initiative, when a group of eminent
opinion leaders from across the Northern half of the
country constituted themselves into a pressure group called
the G 18. It comprised people like Dangiwa Umar,
Abubakar Rimi, Solomon Lar, Adamu Ciroma, Sule
Lamido, Jerry Gana and others numbering up to eighteen
who rose against the General Sani Abacha military
dictatorship. The emergence of this group represented a
strategic boost to the largely South West based coalition of
forces actively opposed to the annulment of the outcome
of the 1993 Presidential elections.
The initial Nigeria-wide opposition to the annulment had
been subverted through the age old contrivance of divide
and rule. After the annulment, the military dictatorship in
power, first with General Ibrahim Babangida and
subsequently with General Sani Abacha, had mounted a
campaign of ethno regional division of the political elite. It
did not take long to accomplish this objective and
effectively reduce resistance to the annulment to the
South-West regional origins of the winner of the election,
Chief Moshood Abiola.
The latter day emergence of the G18 represented a
significant setback for the military fostered political
fractionalization of the civilian wing of the ruling elite.
The G18 was soon broadened to encompass the whole of
Nigeria and renamed G34 under the pro temporal
leadership of former Vice President Alex Ekwueme. By a
quirk of providence it was not long after the establishment
of this group that the personal embodiment of the obstacle
against their wishes and that of the vast majority of
Nigerians, General Abacha, was removed in the same
sneaky manner that he mounted the seat of Nigeria's
military dictator.
At the death of Abacha, there were three political
formations on ground. One was the Yoruba based
Afenifere/NADECO alliance. Another was the G34 and
the third was the residual Abacha coalition of forces. The
most formidable was easily the G34, not the least on
account of the fact that the membership included the
leadership of Afenifere – as represented by Chiefs Bola
Ige and Olu Falae. It was this group that wholly
transformed into the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and
became the first without equal among all potential Nigeria
political parties. It was generally believed and largely
believable that this PDP was going to be the main inheritor
of power from a rapidly retreating military rule.
Ige and Falae had the Presidential seat of Nigeria firmly in
their sight especially against the backdrop of the open
secret that the Yoruba were favored for the position.
Political brinkmanship between the two rivals resulted in a
journey that traversed the three registered parties, the
PDP, All Peoples Party (APP) and later All Nigeria
Peoples Party, ANPP and the Alliance for Democracy,
AD. On account of his formidable professional legal and
political pedigree, Ige was entrusted with the weighty task
of writing the party constitution as he moved from PDP,
through ANPP and finally to the AD. For whatever reason,
Falae appeared to enjoy a head start in the PDP-which
then rendered the party unattractive to his rival, who, in
turn encouraged the movement of Afenifere to the ANPP.
The presence of Arthur Nzeribe and other long standing
saboteurs of the 1993 Presidential election in the ANPP, in
turn, made the party very uncomfortable for the Afenifere
entourage and they finally berthed in the Yoruba
irredentist political platform, the AD. In effect the non-
ideological differentiation of the three political parties was
rooted in the movement of the late Chief Ige from PDP,
through ANPP to AD.
There is also a global dimension to the ideological
normlessness of Nigeria's political party system. Before
1989 the global system largely operated as a bipolar
political division of the world into the America led
Western world capitalist bloc and the Soviet Union led
Eastern Europe socialist bloc. The interpretation of the
collapse of the Soviet Union (which precipitated the end of
the cold war), was that the socialist ideology had
conclusively failed as an organizing principle of the
economic system and no longer poses a viable alternative
to capitalism. Between 1989 and now the
conceptualization of the global system had moved from
bipolar to unipolar (the triumph and dominance of the
capitalist ideology) and multipolar (non-ideological
pooling of workable ideas and concept).
Now let me sound a note of warning to Kayode Komolafe
and his ideological co travelers. I'm not looking for a
debate on the validity of any ideological school of thought;
and if it will mollify their provocation, am willing to
concede that the viability of Capitalism itself had been
called to question by the recent experience of the global
financial and economic meltdown occasioned by the
outright failure of the capitalist mechanism. The capitalist
crisis notwithstanding, there is hardly any country now in
the world that has not turned to the free market capitalist
philosophy to seek guidance and chart a path towards
economic prosperity.
The effort to understand the Nigerian political system from
the standpoint of ideological differences itself begs the
question of the relevance of ideology to the unique
problems and difficulties we are confronted with. What,
for instance, is the relevance of ideological disputation to a
country in which majority of citizens feel that the Nigerian
nationality is an imposition-that requires a fundamental
review? What has ideology got to do with the profligacy
and criminalization of governance?
It is against this background that we find extenuation for
the prevailing non-ideological differentiation of the
Nigerian political system. What is not so readily
defensible is the character instability and fraudulent holier-
than-thou posturing of the parties. Of the three Nigerian
political parties, only the PDP still significantly retains its
nomenclature and substance. ANPP was emasculated by
the split that gave birth to the General Mohammadu
Buhari personified Congress for Progressive Change,
CPC, whilst the AD transformed into the Action Congress
of Nigeria, ACN. And as we all know, these other parties
have found common purpose against the PDP and
proceeded to merge and christened the merger the Alliance
for Progressive Change, APC. All of them are well
represented at the national assembly where each party has
had the opportunity to express its corporate character and
identity. What we have seen of this corporate expression
was the inspiration for the title of this essay.
Since the inception of the Fourth republic it has become an
annual ritual for the national assembly to engage in
prolonged altercation with the Presidency over the budget-
in respect of both the content and implementation.
Constitutionally and conventionally, the power over
appropriation resides significantly in the legislative arm of
government and to this extent it is expected and
permissible for the national assembly to assert itself. Now
whatever one may otherwise think of the executive branch
as personified by the President, the truth is that in the
exercise of its power over appropriation, the national
assembly has tended to overreach itself in ways pregnant
with negative meanings.
It is the duty and responsibility of the executive to lay the
expected national revenue and how it proposes to spend it
before the assembly. Barring the authority to jack up the
estimate and redistribute among the ministries,
departments and agencies of government; the latter has the
latitude to do with the budget as it deems fit.
Unfortunately it is precisely this specific limitation that the
assembly seeks to breach- often with the motive of loading
the budget to accommodate interests that are not entirely
consistent with the public good. Individually and
collectively, legislators seem to have cultivated the culture
of superimposing vested personal interests over the
legitimate role of holding the executive publicly
accountable for the resources appropriated on a case by
case basis.
Ordinarily, there is nothing particularly wrong with the
accommodation of legislators' desire for specific projects
to be located in their constituencies. Here it is called
constituency project. What is wrong is the personal
appropriation of such projects including the determination
of who ultimately gets awarded the contract-which
invariably turns out to be a proxy. I cannot readily recall
the emolument of our national legislators but I quite
clearly remember that nobody ever controverted the report
that the Nigerian legislator is the highest paid lawmaker in
the world; that they even receive higher salaries than the
President of the United States of America. At the inception
of the current assembly, controversy blew out over the
decision of the legislators to purchase Peugeot sedans for
members and label them as pool vehicles for the
performance of oversight functions – in clear
circumvention of the monetization policy.
The bad behavior of the national assembly has attracted
and continues to attract the reprobation of the Nigerian
public especially for constituting such a big burden on the
public purse not to talk of routine corruption scandals.
What has not attracted sufficient public scrutiny is the
conflict between propaganda and reality of the misconduct
of its members who parade themselves as the so called
progressive political parties. They have one standard of
behavior in closed door executive sessions and another in
open sessions where they pose, preen and generally play to
the gallery. Has any member of the national assembly
been known to voice opposition to the scandalous salaries
they pay themselves? On the contrary it is to the full
knowledge of the Nigerian public that where it concerns
the negative propensity to abuse their office especially in
pecuniary matters, the unity of the national assembly
members is unshakable.
And it is instructive that none of the national leaders of
these parties has gone on record to rebuke legislators
elected on their party platform for this ethically corrosive
behavior. The only plank on which General Buhari stakes
his political appeal is his anti-corruption reputation yet I
do not know of any CPC legislator who is not
interchangeable with his most crooked PDP counterpart.
The ACN and their numerous foot soldiers and allies in
the media never let a day pass without drawing attention to
their potential candidacy for beatification and canonization
in contradistinction to the pure unadulterated evil of the
PDP.
If they are inclined to acting the courage of their
conviction they should challenge their elected legislators
to show proof of righteous objection to the regime of
unconscionable remuneration package they cornered for
themselves. If they are not able to do this then it is up to
the party at the receiving end – the PDP, to lay bare this
hypocrisy for all Nigerians to see and understand. Those
who come to equity must come with clean hands.
Via: Thisday
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