September 13, 2014
In 1999, when Nigeria's current experiment with democracy was officially launched, not a lot of people were sorry to the trigger-happy, power-hungry soldiers return to their barracks or withdraw into retirement, as they saw fit. It only took a few days however for the experiment to begin to go awry, as experiments whose planning has been hasty and whose preparation has been shabby are wont to do.
There were three parties of note at the time - the People's Democratic Party (which has sometimes had trouble being the "People's", has always had trouble being "Democratic", but has done quite well at being a "Party", where "party" loosely translates to an assembly of individuals with a spectrum of irreconcilable ideologies), the All People's Party (which may have been a party but was certainly not for all the people), and the Alliance for Democracy (where "democracy" is taken to mean the bloc of south-western states). But although there were three parties, nobody could identify how any one party differed from the rest. No one, least of all the party faithfuls, knew which party had what ideology; no one knew which party was conservative or liberal, nationalist or pan-Africanist, pro-American or pro-Chinese, in favour of going green or staying brown, ... there are many possible ways to classify men based on the ideologies they profess. But in our experiment in 1999, it was not ideologies that bonded men in fellowship. It was interest. And this interest was primarily pecuniary.
By 2003, the retired general, President Olusegun Obasanjo, was the face, head, and heart of the ruling People's Democratic Party. His word was the official party doctrine. If he said you had K-leg, you definitely did not need a doctor's opinion on that 'diagnosis'. K-leg na K-leg. By 2003, the political landscape in Nigeria had crystallized into those who were for President Obasanjo and those who were not for President Obasanjo. Shikena. No further ideology was needed. None was provided.
Today, although we still have parties that are lacking in ideologies, they are not so utterly bereft of ideas today as they were in 2003. For one thing, if you belong to the PDP, and you live in a state controlled by the APC, then everything the government does is wrong. Everything. Including everything you thought was right before that government did them. In the same vein, if you belong to the APC, then for you, President Jonathan and his horde of PDP colleagues can never get governance right. Even when they take a step that is clearly in defence of the overall national interest, they have done it wrong. It does appear that as we head to 2015, Truth and Objective Reasoning have lost their independence and are now slaves to the Dictatorship of Party Loyalty.
Although this may be seen in some quarters as sad, for me, looking back along the road we have come, all I can see is hope. We have come from a point in our history when we had parties that were not political but were just launchpads for the deployment of the personal ambitions of individuals.
We have now come to a point where we have parties whole sole (and shared) ideology is criticizing the other party's every move, without ever proffering an alternative route to follow.
Hopefully by 2019 and more so by 2023, we will get to a point where our political parties will differ significantly from each other, with meaningful manifestoes that will crystallize into party doctrines, rather than serve the ad hoc purpose of giving the finger to the competition. Hopefully, such differences will be sufficiently profound ideologically as to render implausible and impossible the mass defections, redefections, and counterdefections that have characterized our colorful political history in the last 15 years.
By the time that is done, I hope there will be a separate political party for all those who have defected from any political party more than once. That party will probably be called the CMC - and many of our contemporary politicians will be made to belong to it; this, for the simple reason that they all have one thing in common, one ideology that binds them in brotherhood: whether they carry brooms or umbrellas now, they have from 1999 to date been decked in Coats of Many Colors.
- Naijaman
Correction: September 13, 2014
A previous version of this article erroneously spelt launchpads as lauchpads.
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