Mark Olise: Understanding Nigerian Political Parties

By Mark Olise

ACN, CPC & others were like PDP. Even APC is already showing signs of unilateral decision making, carpet-bagging, power mongering, money mongering, godfatherism, political patronage and unaccountability; a harbinger of corruption, nepotism and imposition.

The manner in which the APC leaders are going about recruiting notorious names in the compendium of who is who in the thieving list of PDP as their own way of building a formidable opposition is frightening. It is a testament to the fact that the end of corruption is not yet in sight for Nigeria.

More frightening is the fact that they have managed to convince a lot of persons that they represent change. But what change? Could it be a change from one acronym to another, from one slave master to another, from one dictatorship to another, from one set of looters to another or even from bad to worse?

The answer is not farfetched, especially when viewed against the backdrop of the fact that the APC is an emergency coalition of anti-people elements, undemocratic forces, hegemonists, feudalists, and medieval forces united by one agendum only: “Goodluck Jonathan Must Go”.

Unfortunately, what is this man’s sin? He was not anointed by their caucus to be President. They were only stampeded by the people of Nigeria who could not stand their rejection of him for being an outsider and underdog. Hence, they can only tolerate him for four years and nothing more.

For this cause and this cause only, they are ready to bring down the impermeable house of PDP which was built to perpetuate hegemonic rule. This is to make sure that Goodluck Jonathan is deprived of the veritable platform that an undiluted PDP provides.

Consequently, APC is the new destination of the hegemonic forces in the belief that they can make it the new PDP — an instrument for the perpetuation of hegemonic rule. I stand to be corrected.

I challenge the proponents and protagonists of APC to show and convince Nigerians on how they represent the change that we seek.

They should show how they can catalyse the Nigerian industrialisation process faster than Goodluck Jonathan.

As a matter of fact, they should show us how as Governors they made their States productive and concentrate less on the proceeds from the conflict oil and gas ill-gotten from the environmentally challenged and devastated Niger Delta.

They should show us how much of experience they have in internal party democracy and how as party men and women, they have handled the twin temptations of corruption and nepotism.

I can go on and on but the summary of it all is that they should show Nigerians that they have a better idea or sets of ideas of how to transform, advance and modernise Nigeria better and faster if they want the Nigerian people to take them seriously. Elections are not won on the pages of newspapers.

Before then, the challenge is Goodluck Jonathan’s. Goodluck Jonathan was rejected by the hegemonic oligarchy in 2010 and 2011. But for the timely intervention of the civil society, his political sojourn would have been short-lived and his presidential destiny aborted.

Hardly had he settled down than his Presidency was taken hostage by forces that could not comprehend the enormous responsibilities that history and posterity had forced on him. The first casualty was the vital popular support from the civil society. This support could have been sustained by establishing and consolidating a Presidency/Civil Society interface.

That kind of interface could have provided the opportunity for the Presidency to be on the same page in terms of courage and correctness of strategic policy on how to deal with subsidy scam, corruption, failed petroleum refineries, national question, youth unemployment and the challenge of industrialisation.

The support of the civil society will make the current gang up of the dark political forces against the Jonathan Presidency to be seen in the true light of what it really is: satanic and anti-people; a medieval fight back; a feudal backlash; and war of attrition.

It is still a possibility as we begin the Year 2014 with debates on how best to organise a National Conference which has been one of the major demands of the pro-democracy and self determination groups within the Nigerian civil society. I hope it is realised.

Let me conclude my treatise by agreeing with V.I Lenin that there comes in the life of every society when change is desired. But what kind of change, we may ask? Change must be progressive. There must be an idea driving the process of change and it must be verifiable, debatable and sustainable. With new PDP, which is what the APC has become, that is lacking for now.

Written By Mark Olise
Twitter@OliseMark