To
appreciate, more fully, the current wave of political re-alignments in Nigeria
and be able to make informed projections, we may need to go back to the
Nigerian Civil War of (1967-1970) and the long preparation for the Second
Republic (1979-1983).
When
the military regime of General Olusegun Obasanjo finally, in August 1978,
lifted the ban on political activities imposed in January 1966, two main
political tendencies emerged in Nigeria’s reconstituted national ruling class.
The first tendency was thoroughly conservative and aspired, and largely
succeeded to be national in composition, character and formal leadership. Call
it A. The second tendency was progressive both generally and within the context
of Nigeria’s political history. It was more modern. It also aspired to be
national in composition, but was more limited in national spread than the first
tendency—for historical reasons that may be put aside for now. Call this second
tendency B. Tendency A, though national, had its centre of gravity in what is now known as the Northwestern zone of
the country while Tendency B, though also national, had its centre of gravity in Southwestern zone.
I
proceed with four propositions. One:
Tendencies A and B were in real ideological opposition to each other. Two: All the other political tendencies
in the national ruling class which were, at this time, in preparation for the
Second Republic—were either factions of, or protest groups from, tendencies A
or B or both. Tendency A transformed into the National Party of Nigeria (NPN)
which produced the only president of the Second Republic, Alhaji Shehu Shagari.
Tendency B transformed into the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) led by Chief
Obafemi Awolowo.
Three: These two
main political tendencies in Nigeria’s post-Civil War national ruling class were
not subjective or arbitrary creations. Rather, they were objective products of
Nigeria’s political history, class formation and social formation. They have
survived all the succeeding stages of our political history since the Second
Republic. Their organizational forms have however changed several times. So,
have the relationships between them.
The
fourth proposition—which can be
attached to the third proposition as an explanatory note—is that Nigeria’s
ruling class is characterized by this duality: On the one hand, as a national ruling class, it is
fundamentally united by capitalism (as the dominant mode of production) and
capitalist rules and logic (which run the entire economy). On the other hand,
the class is divided by many things: history; places and roles in the economy; primitive/primary
accumulation of capital; ethnicity; regionalism, religion; culture; etc.
The
fifth proposition is that at least
twice during this post-Civil War period, circumstances and opportunities have
arisen for tendencies A and B, through crises, splits combinations and
separations, to transcend their old political forms and produce two new
ideologically distinguishable political formations each of which would be more
truly national. The first opportunity, ironically, was General Babangida’s
creation of the National Republic Convention (NRC) and Social Democratic Party
(SDP) in 1989 and the second was the emergence of All Progressives Congress in
2013. The first opportunity was lost and the second is now under severe test.
A
reader may remind me here that during the Second Republic (1979-1983), parties
opposed to the ruling NPN announced attempts to “come together” in an alliance.
All I can say, in response, is that until those attempts irredeemably collapsed
not even the most elementary physical structure was set up for fighting a
common foe as powerful as the NPN!
We
may now elaborate. In September 1989, during the military dictatorship, the
military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, dissolved all the political
parties whose autonomous formation the regime had earlier permitted. The
country was then being taken through a long, convoluted
transition-to-civil-rule programme. In a presidential statement the regime
announced the establishment, by decree, of two national parties: a
“little-to-the-right” National Republican Convention (NRC) and a
“little-to-the-left” Social Democratic Party (SDP). Nigerian politicians who
were free and able to do so were advised to join either of the two parties. It
was an act of monumental humiliation which politicians largely resented.
Eventually, however, the military-decreed two-party system took off and the
transition continued.
Two
points are important here. The first is that the National Republican Convention
(NRC) and Social Democratic Party (SDP)—though state-formed—became national
political formations of Nigeria’s ruling class. This had happened by the middle
of 1990. The second point is that by some decisions and processes large
segments of the Nigerian Left embraced the SDP, but only for the purposes of
the return-to-civil-rule transition programme and—in particular—for the
presidential election in which Bashorun M. K. O. Abiola was the presidential
candidate. However, although these segments of the Nigerian Left constituted a
powerful political force in the SDP—in fact, the decisive operational force—it
did not constitute a power bloc in the sense of being able to determine policy,
leadership and distribution of benefits.
Until
November 1993 when they were both dissolved by General Sani Abacha, both NRC
and SDP remained, in character and by definition, national parties (or
formations) of Nigeria’s ruling class. We do not have the space here to digress
to what happened to the transition programme, to the June 1993 presidential
election and to SDP’s presidential candidate, Chief Abiola. The closing point
is that Nigeria’s ruling class, as a single national ruling class, lost an opportunity
to produce two ideologically distinct, but national political formations for
their dominance and rule.
The
most recent opportunity which history has so far presented to the ruling class
of Nigeria to evolve two ideologically distinguishable national political formations
came in 2013 during the Jonathan presidency: the following opposition parties and
formations of the ruling class came together: the Action Congress of Nigeria
(ACN), the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), the All Nigerian Peoples
Party (ANPP) plus fractions of the governing People’s Democratic Party (PDP)
and the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA). The first three parties (ACN,
CPC and ANPP) actually dissolved themselves and were joined by fractions of PDP
and APGA (which, on breaking off from their parent parties, also dissolved
themselves) to form the All Progressives Congress (APC), the current central
governing party of Nigeria’s ruling class.
The
All Progressives Congress (APC) was, right from the start, a nationally-based
party which, mainly on account of the antecedents of the ACN and the reputation
of CPC’s leadership, was seen as potentially progressive. Later, as the 2015 general
elections drew closer, the newly-founded APC was joined by some activist groups
and elements from the Nigerian Left—making the new party more potentially
progressive in the context of Nigerian history and politics. The result was
that Nigerians were presented with two main choices in the 2015 elections: The
ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the newly-created All Progressives
Congress (APC). The former was created in 1998 as a conservative party of
Nigeria’s ruling class. It had remained so. The latter emerged, as earlier
stated, as a potentially progressive party of the ruling class. Both were large
and nationally-based. Thus, with the emergence of APC/PDP in 2013, Nigeria’s
ruling class had a “re-birth” of NRC/SDP of 1990.
The
questions now are: Will Nigeria’s ruling class—presently in political turmoil—reconstruct
their political formations but still maintain two main parties, or will they
return to the multiplicity of (1999–2013)? Will the two parties be
ideologically distinguishable? Will any of them seriously put the main
questions before the nation on its agenda? Will they both be truly national?
And, finally, what will the Nigerian Left be doing as the ruling class, again,
takes the popular masses of Nigeria through another long round of un-redeeming
ride? In particular, how does the Left intervene in this current process of
separation and combination?
*Edwin Madunagu,
mathematician and journalist, writes from Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria.
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