Like a thunder bolt, a new political platform, the Action Democratic Party, ADP, has consistently taken the number three position on the rungs in the order of electoral victories at state and national levels, behind the All Progressives Congress, APC, and Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, since the 2019 general elections.
Some of the important features that make the performance of the ADP unique and exciting include the fact that, the votes garnered by the party were genuine expression of the desires of the electorate without monetary inducement, coercion, manipulation and corruption of the electoral due processes used by the leading two political parties. Also, the number of votes scored by the party in the elections, so far, indicates progressive upward swings as well as a nationwide spread, especially amongst the youths and women.
The streak of the ADP taking third position since 2019, re-enacted in the governorship elections in Edo and Ondo states, have also been repeated in the recently concluded bye-elections into various legislative houses in Katsina, Lagos, Borno, Enugu and Plateau states, among others. The ADP is, therefore, thankful to Nigerians and encouraged by the increasing acceptance of its manifesto and promise to usher in a better, more progressive and prosperous nation.
Obviously, the ADP’s emerging prominence cannot be unconnected with the disillusionment of Nigerians on the abysmal performance of the two frontline political parties. The ruling APC, and the main opposition PDP have, respectively, failed to deliver on their primary constitutional and democratic obligations to Nigerians in the last 21 years, 1999 till date.
The APC on the one hand, has bungled the mandate of the electorate to provide good governance that results in economic prosperity, security and hope for Nigerians. The party has also severally shown its gross incapacity to operate within the framework of even its internal constitutional provisions or rules and regulations guiding affairs of the party. With such a situation, Nigerians should not expect the APC and its governments at both national and state levels to adhere to constitutionalism, rule of law and the general order of good governance.
The latest showing of the APC’s penchant for assaulting laid down rules was manifested in the recent dissolution of the party’s Executive Committees at the national and state levels. In a glare act of impunity and utter disregard to its own constitutional provision as well as the expectations and clamour of generality of its members, the APC leadership, for reasons selfish and parochial, decided to install members of the dissolved Executive Committees as members of so-called caretaker committees.
That incident came in the heels of the APC’s show of lack of internal order, coherence and discipline in the selection of the party’s flag bearer in the just concluded senatorial byelection in Imo State where multiple members of the party are now engaged in a legal tussle as to who was the authentic candidate of the party.
The above and several other bizarre, daylight impunities cumulatively highlight the danger signals from the APC that Nigerians should be on the look-out for the party’s tendencies towards illegalities and audacity in matters of constitutionalism and rules of the game in a democratic setting. Indeed, there is no doubt that the nation’s democracy is endangered if, these traits of the APC are carried onto 2023.
If the APC as a party that was made up of strange bedfellows is, expectedly, incongruous, rancorous and a hub of commotion, the opposition PDP which pride itself as the oldest political party in the country has not, shamefully, played the needed traditional role of an opposition party. The PDP has been a bungling and a cacophonous political party that has shown lack of the characteristics of an opposition that offers decisive and feasible alternative solutions on pertinent issues that affect the welfare, security and happiness of the citizens.
Instead, we have seen the PDP as a political party whose only obsession is to grab power by unseating the APC without any clear-cut ideological paradigm shift or practical and viable policy thrust and programmes. Even in its quest to gain power, the PDP has also shown that its modalities are the same undemocratic norms of election rigging and manipulation. Such was the case in the Edo gubernatorial election which was won by the PDP with manifest display of money, vote buying, ballot box snatching, bribery of election officials and agents of opposition political parties.
The APC and the PDP have proven the much of ineptitude and incapacity to respectively provide quality governance and a robust opposition because, nothing good can fundamentally be expected from the two that are really, the two sides of a coin. That is the explanation for the fact that while majority of the leading lights of the APC had crossed over from the PDP, the recent decamping of Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo state from the APC to the PDP and, that of Dave Umahi of Ebonyi state from the PDP to the APC tells it succinctly that after all, the PDP and the APC share the same DNA.
In the year 2021, the Action Democratic Party is set to build on its capacity as the political party to beat in the nation’s political space by unfolding its far-reaching, people-centered and pragmatic transformative programmes and policies. Our credible alternatives programs and leadership styles are propelled by the burning historical exigencies to move Nigeria from the grips of rudderless, visionless, clueless and rapacious buccaneers, upstarts and pretenders.
Ibiang is the Deputy National Publicity Secretary of Action Democratic Party, ADP.
