As 2014 gradually comes to an end, the din of political activities is getting louder.
The most significant indication that the game has really started, for me, is not the declaration of the run for president on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) by both former Head of State, Muhammadu Buhari and former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar
It is not the endorsement of President Goodluck Jonathan by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
The main confirmation that electioneering has officially taken off is the resignation of seven ministers on Wednesday, October 15, to pursue their gubernatorial ambitions in their respective states. Whatever causes a minister in Nigeria to resign is serious business.
Nothing can be a more serious business in Nigeria than politics. A school of thought believes that it is the only thriving business in the country now with the best returns on investment.
Little wonder that almost eight years after President Olusegun Obasanjo’s exit from power, politics remains a do-or-die affair, which explains the crisis in the Edo State House of Assembly.
When the game of politics is played on a canvass devoid of ideology, violence, rather than superior logic, becomes the instrument of persuasion. The debilitating political struggle in Edo is nothing but a precursor of what to expect as 2015 beckons. It is a proxy war.
The crisis started in May when five lawmakers, including the Deputy Speaker, Festus Ebea, defected from the APC to the PDP. Before then, the APC had 20 members in the 24-member Assembly, which was absolute majority. But with the defections, the party’s control was significantly diluted.
It was the move by the APC to shut out the defectors that is at the root of the crisis.
When four of the five lawmakers went to court to restrain the Assembly from declaring their seats vacant and suspending them, Justice A. M. Liman only granted the first prayer that their seats should not be declared vacant but declined the second prayer on the grounds that the “disciplinary power of the house is not subject to the judicial review of the court.”
It was on the strength of the ruling that the Assembly leadership suspended them indefinitely.
But, expectedly, the PDP fought back and violence ensued. While the nine PDP lawmakers, ostensibly with the backing of Abuja, gained access to the official Assembly chambers, the state government moved the sittings of the APC members to Government House.
Now, the crisis is festering. Penultimate week, a PDP member, Abdulrasaq Momoh, was attacked by thugs in his residence at the legislators’ quarters in Benin, a crime the PDP blamed on the APC.
Subsequently, the Majority Leader, Philip Shuaibu, and four others, among them Sunday Aghedo, also a lawmaker, were arraigned in court.
When the accused were granted bail in self-recognition and the case adjourned till October 29, the aggrieved party resorted to self-help.
On Thursday, October 9, when Jonathan visited Benin to lay the foundation of a $1 billion Azura power project, some youths believed to be sympathetic to the PDP stormed the Benin Airport to protest the attack on Momoh.
Two days later, thugs wielding dangerous weapons stormed the legislators’ quarters assaulting APC lawmakers and vandalising property, including cars.
Since then, the two political parties have been trading blames. Governor Adams Oshiomhole, who visited the scene hours later, blamed the police and the PDP for the attack, an accusation the PDP dismissed.
What is playing out in Edo State is typical of the politics of intolerance that is the bane of every attempt we have made at democratic governance. Nigerian politicians don’t take prisoners, and for them acquisition of power is an end in itself rather than a means to an end where the end is the promotion of public good.
This malaise persists because our leaders have refused, for reasons best known to them, to learn from history.
Neither the PDP nor the APC is smelling rose in this crisis. While Oshiomhole and his party are right to insist that the APC lawmakers who defected to the PDP had lost the constitutional right to remain in the Assembly, the truth is that he is as guilty as those he is accusing.
Oshiomhole is only being smart by half.
Shortly before the defections in Edo, the APC had hailed the defection of some PDP National Assembly members to it. When Oserheimen Osunbor was Governor, the PDP controlled all elective positions in the state – the governorship, Assembly, council chairmanships and councillorships.
But when Oshiomhole became Governor in 2008, he ensured that PDP lawmakers defected to the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and the speaker was forcefully removed. Then, he celebrated the feat as a mark of political astuteness. Now that the table is turning, he has remembered provisions of the Constitution.
Even on Thursday, Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti announced in his inaugural address that six serving members of the APC in the state House of Assembly had defected to the PDP. He invited all of them to the podium while reading his address.
Yet, Section 68 (1g) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) says a lawmaker shall vacate his seat in the Parliament of which he is a member if “being a person whose election to the House was sponsored by a political party, he becomes a member of another political party before the expiration of the period for which that House was elected.”
It adds: “Provided that his membership of the latter political party is not as a result of a division in the political party of which he was previously a member or of a merger of two or more political parties or factions by one of which he was previously sponsored.”
This constitutional provision has been observed in the breach by all the political parties since 1999. So, while it is convenient for the APC to hide under the provision and punish the PDP for engineering the defections, which is the right thing to do, it smacks of hypocrisy when the APC and its leaders are equally guilty.
This lack of principle that governs our politics of ‘the end justifies the means’ is at the core of the problems bedeviling this democratic dispensation.
Politicians must make a conscious effort to play by the rule. Impunity is not a democratic virtue, and no group has the monopoly of brigandage and violence.
For our democracy to work, the processes must be governed by law. Sixteen years is enough time for us to move away from politics governed by the dictates of strong men on the wheels of propaganda to one run on the canvass of rule of law. Anything short of that will sooner than later spell doom for the country.