APC defections: Chickens home to roost?

Tayo Oke

drtayooke@gmail.com

The defection last week, of several All Progressives Congress’ lawmakers appears, on the surface at least, to portend danger and a serious obstacle to the re-election prospects of the ruling party in the forthcoming general election in 2019. If the events of last week appear sudden, even shocking to some people, they are the ruptures of a tragedy not long foretold on this column, as one of its avid readers (who shall remain nameless), from the United States, upon hearing the news, quickly wrote to remind me of my earlier “prophesy” on the defection. True, the column had forewarned: “Some of the central characters will already be familiar faces indeed. Many of them have been lurking around the alleys like dogs on occasions like this for years. First, they belonged to the losing party; then, they made a comeback as local government chairmen for the ruling party; then, they morphed into senators, then, governors, then, ministers, and now having again crossed carpet, seek a return to re-take their senatorial and governor seats: their birth right of course! Others will appear, out of the blue, like the 17th century brigands, to smash and grab before proclaiming dominion over a hapless citizenry. Yet, there is a method in this collective madness. For some, the modus operandi is persuasion, sweat and the old fashioned hard graft. For others, it is chicanery, skulduggery and violence.” (See, “2018: The rat race begins”, The PUNCH, January 2, 2018.)

Now, the APC itself had come into being in 2014 as a child of circumstance. Several opposition parties and personalities had defected from the Peoples Democratic Party and others to team up with the likes of Bola Tinubu, Muhammadu Buhari, Atiku Abubakar, Chinuike Amaechi, Abubakar Saraki and others to form the APC, with the sole aim of wresting power from the PDP. The newly formed APC embarked upon a war of attrition on the PDP, chipping away at its core support day after day, and night after night, offering all kinds of juicy positions to any want-away “top brass” within the PDP. The cumulative effect of which was to reduce the once mighty party into a rump of hapless yesterday men who needed to be evicted and chased out of town. It worked and the rest, they say, is history. The question is, has the APC’s “audacity of hope” in 2014 empowered others to repeat the feat? Has the party unwittingly laid the foundations for toppling the power of incumbency in this country that can be copied and deployed to similar devastating effect henceforth? In other words, have the chickens of the APC’s electoral masterstroke in 2014 now come home to roost?

As I have said in previous write-ups on the chances of victory for the APC next year, the current calculus and permutations still point to an easy win for the party in 2019 despite the defections. Sure as daylight, they too are busy engineering defections flowing the other way soon enough; from the PDP to the APC. The battle of defections has begun in earnest. It happens in our politics with an amazing regularity because it is basically a principle of convenience; not an action rooted in conviction. Does this sound like I am openly canvassing for or against the APC in 2019? Absolutely, and categorically not. In fact, it would be a major disservice to the readers of this column who cut across the political spectrum in this country and beyond. Can the APC be defeated in 2019? Of course, it can, but the challenge is huge, and time is fast running out. The prominent people defecting from the party is a major move towards its defeat at the election, but of itself, it is not enough. There are several reasons for that; first, the APC has not broken into open warfare in the way the PDP did prior to the formation of the APC in 2014. Second, the PDP had been in power for 16 years, long enough for people to grow tired of them, which, in fact, people were.  The slogan of “Change” thus struck a chord with the electorate at large in 2014.  The APC is less than four years on the saddle. Right now, though the PDP can feel the discontentment of people against the APC, it has yet to translate that into a rallying cry, and a bumper sticker message people can run with. Third, the APC was an amalgam of several parties, even if the dramatis personae inside them were pretty familiar to all of us. The PDP is yet to merge with other parties to create a new one. It remains the old one simply trying to recycle itself. At least, the formation of the APC gave it some aural of newness even if the dramatis personae were also very familiar to all of us. Last but not least, is the dreaded “national mood”. It is the seismic shift in public opinion the effect of which, when it occurs, is so palpable that even a deaf, dumb and illiterate individual can feel it. That level was reached at the formation of the APC in 2014; I am not so sure the country is even close to that now, despite the wanton killings in many parts of the country.

Apart from the above basic rationale for power holding and power shift in Nigeria’s electoral politics, there are other immutable factors. First, it is that the centre of gravity for political power in this country remains the core North/South-West axis. Others are important, but it does not distract from the fact that they are mere pawns on the chessboard; for battering, and horse-trading. Second, it is also that unless these other “outside” forces coalesce around an alternative, a “big gun”, so-to-speak, their influence at the decisive moment is minimal. There is no history of such coalescence amongst those varied groups, who often approach the ruling axis with different and conflicting demands, only to end up betraying and selling each other out at the altar of expediency. That is what makes it easy for them to be sidestepped so often. We are still watching out for the sign of a crack within the ruling axis, none appears to be forthcoming. If and when that happens, you will get the low-down here first.

That said, the one singular factor that could represent a game-changer in all of this, short of a revolution, is an amendment to the electoral law which does not permit independent candidacy in elections. You have to belong to a political party in order to run for office in this country. No advanced democracy anywhere in the world makes this a condition for elective office. Furthermore, our current electoral law legitimises and entrenches power domination by the ruling elite. The stipulation that compels parties to stretch themselves across 36 states to obtain legitimacy is an affront to freedom of association. The rule is deliberately put in place to curb the influence of regional political forces, for fear they might whip up ethnic political agitation for autonomy. History has, however, taught us that suppressing legitimate voices of dissent only serves to stoke up resentment, which invariably boils over into open conflict time and again. Yugoslavia, Spain and the United Kingdom are three very familiar examples of places where efforts had been made to suppress such regional agitation for decades, but failed, bringing in its wake much violence and bloodshed.

The 2019 election in this country is not even about the welfare of the people as you might expect; it is about power, and the modalities for taking it away from the ruling axis. To this end, we have explored the way to do that within the current political structure. We have also explored the way to do that outside it. Final judgement on which one to embrace rests with YOU.

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