Our ‘One Party’ Democracy
By Chidi Amuta
Of all the ills that afflict a democracy, a stubborn virus in the party system is the most lethal. Where politicians treat the party system as their exclusive preserve, to do as they wish, it is hard for the system to self-correct let alone see that there is anything wrong. It could be worse when parties become like rickety ‘molues’ merely meant to convey political passengers to their next election destination irrespective of their belief, aim and purpose for seeking power.
Where political parties degenerate into cultic monopolies reserved for a few anointed chieftains and their select acolytes, the party system festers to infect the overall polity with its own infirmities. A corrupt political party system can only lead to a devious mangling of democracy itself. It is easy for a liberal multi-party democracy to degenerate into a cultic autocracy manipulated by a select minority for state capture and authoritarian oligarchy. A devious manipulation of the political party system is the commonest source of authoritarian rule in most of Africa.
To a great extent, all the present hue and cry about the trouble with democracy in Nigeria begins and ends with the ills of the party system. There is of course a ruling party, the APC. I have lost count of the number of other parties in the system, about 80, I understand! But of the multitude, only two other parties, namely the Peoples Democratic Party and the Labour Party are most prominent. At least, this is the number that made themselves heard from the results of the 2023 presidential election. Ideally, then, the APC as the ruling party should be feeling the heat of the other two major parties as ‘opposition parties’. By the nature of democracy, the Nigerian public should get a constant feel of an effective policy alternative to the ruling party from the body of opposition parties. Yes indeed, from the general trend of discourse in our polity, there is indeed a ruling party from the perspective of governance and dominance of the political space. But no one seems to hear the concerted voice of an opposition set of parties. Both Mr. Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi as individual political leaders are consistent in criticizing the policies and programmes of the ruling party. It is doubtful if the parties they lead are acting and speaking like opposition parties rightly regarded and properly defined.
In Nigeria, once parties are formed and registered, they are left to guide and guard the political process on the basis of their independence. But our parties also use their independence to cultivate the ingredients of their own decay and even death. The concept of party supremacy is often invoked to insulate and protect the internal weaknesses and deficiencies of the parties themselves. The supremacy of defective parties is the engine room of misrule and the decay of democracy.
In Nigeria’s tradition of multiparty democracy, it is common for the ruling party to predominate the political space with a myth of infallibility. Winner takes all. Other parties exist in name and skeleton, not in substance. The ruling party systematically swallows the others in bits and pieces, literally cannibalizing them.
Therefore, although many parties exist on the INEC register, there is only one effective party. That party is the ruling party, the one that won the last election and controls the majority of the political space. In between elections, our system operates like a one party state except where the next most popular party controls a sizeable chunk of the political space. Thus, our political culture has tended to produce a pseudo one party system after each national election.
The tendency is for party members from the losing parties to seek to migrate to the winning side. Even as a deliberate ploy, the ruling party seeks to harvest or poach members from the opposition in order to maintain its ruling hegemony or whittle down the power of the opposition.
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In recent times, concern has arisen within the political class over the aggressive expansion of the APC into territories ruled by the opposition parties. After the 2023 general elections, the winning APC dominates the political space: majority in the National Assembly; majority of state governors; majority in state legislatures as well as control of federal executive power. Correspondingly, control of the national economy and the power of patronage follow logically. In the process of wielding majoritarian power and influence, the ruling party acquires the swagger of one party.
Recently, chieftains of the other parties have cried out in protest that the APC, in its rapacious hunger for membership, seems to be gearing towards swallowing other parties and therefore laying the foundations for a one party Nigeria. Alhaji Atiku, presidential candidate of the PDP in the last election, has openly leveled this charge. So have other party leaders and key politicians.
Vicariously, the opposition parties seem to be lending support to this trend. They have failed to manage their affairs in a manner that should make them stronger as opposition platforms.
The PDP is caught in an existential factional fight between the disciples of FCT Minister Nyesom Wike and those of Alhaji Atiku. The party has no consensual executive. Similarly, the Labour Party with control of only one state governorship but victory in 12 states in the 2023 presidential race is torn in litigations. Mr. Peter Obi , the party’s presidential candidate in the last election along with Alex Otti, Abia State Governor are pitted in legal battle with the party executive, led by the disputed chairman, Mr. Abure. Mr. Abure has been contesting leadership of the party in court and has in fact won pending appeal. Most of the other parties are not faring any better.
The opposition parties are mostly torn by crises and instability. In that process, they are reinforcing the notion that our system has no credible opposition. The so-called opposition parties lack internal integrity or self-defining identities to justify their independent existence in a multiparty democracy. In this atmosphere, only the APC wears the appearance of cohesiveness.
Even then, the cohesive appearance of the APC owes only to one factor: it is the party in power and has the monopoly of control of power, patronage and pork. Outside that circumstantial exigency, the APC is as splintered as the rest. It is even more incoherent than the others in terms of ideas and a track record of governance and definable legacy.
Effectively, then, we are in a practical one party situation: the ruling party and literally no opposition parties. Intrinsically, there is no difference between all the major parties in contention in this democracy, whether ruling or not. There are no ideological or value differences among our parties. They are all acronyms, colourful flags and emblems with little intrinsic meaning. They have different names.
Our parties are populated by the same caliber of Nigerian politicians drawn from a uniform national elite pool of unemployed college graduates, failed “charge and bail” lawyers, unsuccessful venturers and other jobless middle aged hustlers, etc. This is why it is ever so easy for people to migrate from one party to the other with ease. No ideology. No core beliefs. No values. No commitment to any form of service to the people. No vision for the nation. Mostly an eye for financial returns wherever it may be found. Nigeria has earned a distinction of being the only country in which an individual can have breakfast in one party and end up with dinner in a totally different party without any qualms.
So, effectively, we have a political canvas populated by practically the same tribe of political animals. They are at best hunting for a party label to wear around their necks for the purpose of qualifying to contest the next election or being enrolled into the next power grab assemblage.
Anyone interested in testing this assumption should point out any differences in policies and programmes among the states on the basis of the parties in power in each state. Oyo State has been ruled by a PDP government for almost six years while its neighbour Osun has been ruled by the APC. What is the difference in style of governance, policy thrust or vision?
The common origins of the parties is best dramatized by the manner in which the former ruling party, the PDP, split up and eventually gave birth to the APC and others. Differences within the ruling PDP between incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan and the more progressive governors in the Nigerian Governors Forum had become intractable by 2013. While the PDP convention was going on at Abuja’s Eagle Square, the renegade faction of the party staged a walk out from the party at Eagle Square and trooped to the Yar’Adua Centre where they birthed the New PDP (N-PDP) as an official faction of the party under the leadership of politicians like Atiku Abubakar, Rotimi Amaechi and the inspiration of Muhammadu Buhari behind the scene. Politicians who went to party convention in the morning as PDP returned home in the evening as N-PDP!
Subsequent political machinations culminated in the coalition of opposition parties that became the APC under which Mr. Buhari ran and won the 2015 election that brought the APC to power. Yet in spite of its origins, the APC which remains Nigeria’s ruling party has neither evolved a unifying identity nor a defining legacy of program in power to earn an identity.
But our system is only a one party arrangement by default. By strict definition, a multi-party system in which one ruling party gobbles up others is not by technical definition a one party system. That terminology is still the preserve of authoritarian systems as the ones operating in China, North Korea and, to a large extent, Russia. The attributes of one party authoritarian systems are well known. Nigeria is far from that rigid formality. What we have is merely evidence of the lack of the discipline to practice multi-party democracy in its ideal form. It is that ideal that needs to be revamped and strengthened.
Penalties for cross-carpeting need to be tighter. Opposition parties need to imbibe the culture of methodical and systematic opposition. Politicians need to understand how to lose elections and remain party members through a power tenure. Party membership ought to outlast one election cycle. Most importantly, our parties need to spend time to evolve into embodiments of ideals and values. Those who sign up for party membership ought to subscribe to the ideas and ideals of these parties. The work of opposition parties ought to be as serious and rigorous as that of the ruling party.
The alternative to the ideas of a ruling party should be no less rigorous and credible than the prevailing ideas of the dominant ruling party. In the United States, when a Republican president is in the White House, the Democrats in Congress or governing individual states are no less rigorous and serious. Similarly, when in the United Kingdom a Labour Prime Minister is at 10 Downing, the Tories do not go to sleep or fall apart. They quickly rouse into an alternative government. If the opposition caves in or succumbs, liberal democracy risks degenerating into one party authoritarianism.
