Tinubu and the assimilation of Nigeria’s opposition politics

Against the swirl of twists and turns associated with the buildup to 2027 polls, the ‘jam-session’ that marked the inauguration of the All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council (APC/PCC) on Wednesday this week in Abuja accentuated the dominance of the persona of President Bola Tinubu in the country’s political space. As a first-time president seeking a second term in office, he naturally remains the person to beat by other contenders to secure the presidency in 2027.  However, the inauguration exercise largely conveyed a notion that he could have ‘cast a spell’ on the Nigerian political space, whereby members from both his and some opposition parties were featured in a web of strange bed fellows.

 Along the history of Nigerian politics, there were instances where the ruling parties and elements of the opposition worked in alliance with each other. But such had been conducted with clear-cut terms of interparty balance of interests. Easy to recall are the alliances between the NCNC with the NPC at independence in 1959, and that of the NPN and NPP in the Second Republic.  Also remarkable in another context was the instance of the botched efforts in 1998 by late General Sani Abacha to transmute from Nigeria’s military head of state to a democratically elected president.

He had corralled five political parties in the country into one front in order to jointly adopt him as the sole presidential candidate in a forthcoming election. The assassinated former governor of old Oyo State and later attorney-general of the country, Bola Ige, had described the adopted parties as the ‘five fingers of a leprous hand’ in an apparent reference to the negative portends of such tendency for the country’s democracy.   

In an uncanny sense, the inauguration of Tinubu’s APC/PCC offers a throw-back to the Abacha dispensation, whereby elements that are supposed to be in the opposition simply abandoned ship to be in dalliance with the ruling party, including serving as bonafide members of the APC/PCC, and in total disregard to whatever interest their respective parties stood for.  Prominent among the opposition figures were the ‘dancing duo’ of FCT Minister Nyesom Wike of the PDP and governor of Osun State,  Ademola Adeleke of the Accord Party, as well as Anambra State Governor  Chukwuma Soludo of APGA, to name a few.

Granted the fact that ordinarily these elements from opposition parties who should have been rooting for their respective parties’ candidates are now for Tinubu raises fundamental question of the course of future of the country’s democracy. What unique selling point have they seen in Tinubu to mesmerize them into the status of fawning acolytes of the president is a valid question.  Would it be his performance during his first tenure? 

Talking about his performance, the facts are clear about the current state of mass anguish across the country, courtesy of his economic reforms. Yet many are pressing for his continuity in office for a second term. A corollary to this is the question on whether Tinubu has cast a spell on the country? 

Given the yet to be established premise of Nigeria’s politics running on the tracks of the esoteric, the clue to Tinubu’s grip on the politics of Nigeria must derive from the country’s real-life circumstances and tendencies – the appreciation of which could define the dexterity and success prospects of any candidate for   political office; especially the presidency. Hence the prospects of success for any candidate in the race, including him, depend on his or her mastery of such tendencies that define the course and tempo of the nation’s political system.

Seen in perspective therefore, the tendencies that drive the Nigerian political system lie right in the contradictions – the strengths and weaknesses of the polity as manifest in the daily realities of life in the country. These constitute factors that range from ethnic considerations, colonial hangover tendencies, weak public institutions, hero worshipping and poverty, all taken in no particular order.

For instance, the role of ethnic considerations in the ascendancy of national leaders in the country, including Tinubu cannot be questioned. It is the primary credential for emergence of leaders; hence the doctrine of rotation in the choice of political leaders in respective parts of the country. In the same vein, can it be said that it was the ethnic card of being a Yoruba – a majority ethnic group that propelled him into the orbit of leadership. Were he of a minority stock in the comity of the over 300 ethnic nationalities that make up Nigeria as a federation, Bola Tinubu would have at best been a local champion and not the face of the entire Yoruba nation in the Nigerian leadership matrix.

Coming to the factor of national institutions, Tinubu benefitted from the dislocations associated with the prolonged servitude under the military era, as much of the elements serving in the leadership community are products of serial dislocation of that era as he inherited’ his office not just by the will of the Nigerian people but largely as a compensation for propping late President Muhammadu Buhari into office. Buhari himself belonged to a class of military officers who, through serial coup d’états compromised the emergence of strong national institutions, leaving the country today with individuals who often assert more authority than national institutions.  

 Coming to the sensitive issue of poverty and the fight against it, it is a trite matter that Nigerian masses became poorest under Tinubu, even as the country mobilised the largest quantum of funds under his administration.

Drawing from the lessons of a novel by the legendary novelist James Hadley Chase ‘What’s better than money’, whose theme is the sale of the conscience for money, the swerve of the opposition elements to Tinubu’s camp may not be far from the human foible of ranking money over principles.