Democracy thrives on dissent, constructive division, and calibrated debates. Unanimity, especially when foisted by ulterior motives and personal interests, often sounds the death knell for any democracy.
As avid politicians and students of political science know only too well, the lines that level players on any political turf are notoriously fickle. They are also susceptible to being cross with nonchalance and even recklessness.
As a country with plenty of political turmoil, Nigerians have seen political parties come and go with much glee and grandiosity. It is no new thing here.
Many political parties have been born in Nigeria, bonded together, and gone through bruising political battles only to disintegrate and disband along the way, with others taking their place.
In 2015, the Congress for Progressive Change and the Action Congress came together to redraw Nigeria’s political battle lines. Armed with a handful of vengeful defectors from the People’s Democratic Party, a shock victory during the 2015 presidential election gave a party led by serial losers an unprecedented shot at Nigeria’s presidency. Eleven years down the line, the party vanquished at those historic polls is self-destructing and threatening to bring down the ugly and creaking edifice of opposition politics in Nigeria. PDP’s self-imposed self-implosion seemed a formality since aging political warhorse and former vice president Atiku Abubakar dumped the party for the African Democratic Congress (ADC).
The PDP’s demise as a credible opposition party is a particularly crushing blow for Nigerians, given that it was the party’s disastrous politics of bread and butter that opened the way for the All Progressives Congress, which has
Grossly underperformed, to get into power.
With supposed opposition governors now jumping ship like rats, the value of courageous opposition politicians like Peter Obi has become even more amplified. In a country where politicians are synonymous with muck and mockery, the former Anambra governor is a rare mix of integrity and industry—that rare politician who was able to pass through Nigeria’s corridors of power without picking up a single stain.
In 2023, despite the ruling All Progressives Congress fine-tuning the machinery of election manipulation inherited from the PDP and his lack of traditional political structure, Nigerians fell hard for Peter Obi. In elections many believe he won; his third place placing was an indictment of the country’s major political parties.
Too many Nigerian politicians are rent seeking opportunists with no clear political ideology. Extremely self-aware, they are prime political survivalists who are always doing the math to see where the calculus would point and move their tents. It largely explains why Nigeria’s leadership struggles over the years are directly traceable to its lack of robust political ideologies, identity, and integrity.
Nigerians have mixed opinions about former vice president Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. But he might not care about the sore fact that many people consider him a serial loser. He has contested and lost many elections, but he seems as energetic as ever as 2027 beckons.
For Peter Obi, faith has not been an easy keep while the APC has run Nigeria aground in the past four years. Yet, many see him as Nigeria’s only hope in such dire circumstances.
This erosion of opposition politics in Nigeria should worry Nigerians to no end. Strengthening the opposition should be deliberate for Nigerians. Keeping Nigeria’s incompetent leadership on its toes is crucial if Nigeria is ever to escape this dark dungeon where it has been stuck for years.
Nigeria needs dissenting and discerning voices, not a sycophantic and misplaced alignment with the center, no matter how rotten the center proves to be.
If the country must get its act together and pull in the same direction of progress, then it cannot afford to have politicians who are pulled in the same direction by nothing besides the magnetic forces of greed, self-service, and self-preservation.
Ike Willie-Nwobu,
Ikewilly9@gmail.com
