The emergence of the opposition mega party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) is one of the significant political developments in Nigerian politics since 1999, when the country bade farewell to military rule.
The APC is a strong statement on the viability of a two- party system in the polity, if the people, the voters, indeed are to have the power to decide who governs them. Though, a multiparty system properly defines a true democracy, the existence of dominant and identifiable two big parties which best aggregates the wishes of the people is a measure of political maturity and progress.
It was the monumental corruption, the misrule as well as the political arrogance of the PDP that challenged leaders of other parties to work for a solution and an alternative.
Anger at the steady retrogression of the nation while the PDP leaders make good at the expense of the rest of us challenged the leaders of the then Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and the All Nigerian People’s Party (ANPP) to work on their differences and come together as one big opposition party to join resources to try and salvage the nation from what has become the strangle hold of the ruling PDP.
The birth of the APC was a tough one. Few people in Nigeria, including some members of the three parties that came together gave the effort a chance. This was because in Nigeria’s political history, opposition parties have never successfully come together to remove the dominant ruling party. The dominant ruling party, going by the enormous resources at its dispersal and the immoral manner it deploys it, often sabotages the efforts of the opposition. Also, very importantly, opposition leaders in the past usually felt overwhelmed by the ubiquity of the presence of the dominant ruling party and this attenuates their resolve to challenge it.
It was however destined to be different with the leader of the defunct ACN, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, retired General MohammaduBuhari of the Congress for Progressive Change, Dr OgbonnayaOnu of the veteran opposition party, the defunct All Nigeria Peoples Party and a faction of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) under Governor RochasOkorocha of Imo State. Having had profound experiences and encounter with the PDP, and seriously challenged by the PDP’s boast that no matter what Nigerians want and think, that it would rule forever, these gentlemen knew that they had a supreme duty to put aside their personal ambitions, political differences and glory to give the people of Nigeria, another party and platform and a chance for a better future. The PDP platform had become tainted, corrupt and conceited and no longer pretended to be a democratic party but a military formation where even the opinions of the members no longer mattered. When the PDP on its own jettisoned the zoning formula which endeared it to the majority of Nigerian’s, it was clear that the masses needed another party for the nation to move forward.
The problem with the ruling party is that it has been in power for too long and is unable to manage its electoral success. It now equates its electoral victories to a sort of conquest of the nation and its resources with the result that its leaders and privileged members began to act like Pharaoh’s looking down on the Nigerian people and making fun of their suffering.
We commend those who worked hard to give birth to the APC. Nigerians have welcomed them as the party registration exercise nationwide has shown. It is hoped that if the APC can avoid the mistakes of the PDP while it held sway, notably open corruption and disdain for the masses, the Nigerian people would likely reward the party in 2015, so as to give the nation a future, and a hope.
Alhassan wrote from Maitama, Abuja
