IN his book, Principles and Practices of Public Administration in Nigeria, Augustus Adebayo noted that the time for general postings in the civil service was usually the “period for the outbreak of incurable diseases”, requiring that everyone serve at the headquarters and none willing to go to the rural areas.
The melting away of this epidemic once the waves of the reshuffling had died down, of course, pointed to its conditioned pattern. Fulton Sheen, the eloquent American archbishop currently on the journey to sainthood, also found behavioural analysis a useful model for understanding irrational actions of otherwise intelligent people.
It is election season in Nigeria, the season of the fantastic, antics and stunts. It is once more the season of illusions and false thunder. On this bustling highway of clashing interests and ambitions, there is no shortage of spectacles. Aspirants to councillorship offices find it within their rights to siren their way through the streets. Political office holders who have spent three and half years of their four year mandate aloof to the cries of the electorate suddenly become philanthropic – minded, announcing scholarships here and there. Running poultry at government quarters is suddenly a scandal to be cleansed with impeachment. And at the junction of territorial ambition, maneuvers for 2015 and political elite dominance align with huge consequences for democracy.
The maneuvers for 2015 have characteristically ignited a season of defections from one political party to another. It is a desperate search for relevance by politicians, featuring to a greater or lesser degree, elements of bazaar, hide and seek and poaching. No political party is immune to this potentially destabilising game of fortunes but centrist, smaller parties such as APGA and Labour are under greater assault.
The rash of defections which sometimes assume a roundabout course wherein a politician returns to his originating party after making the circuit of competing political parties underscores in bold relief the vacuity of many a politician. In the face of the criticisms which greeted the recent decamping of four APGA federal representatives to the PDP, Uche Ekwunife, one of the quartets dismissed APGA as of little consequence, saying that a political party exists only as a platform for contesting election.
The comment is unfortunate both for its blissful ignorance on the functions of a political party as well as for the pointed unconcern about the sanctity of a party mandate. With the palace mentality thriving so well in Nigerian government and politics, is it any wonder that the country is under – developed and our leadership largely pedestrian?
At the time of this well – publicised exodus, former Anambra State Governor, Mr Peter Obi, was linked to the development in some quarters. Obi, who had earlier resigned his chairmanship of the party’s Board of Trustees, in a surprising move, denied being the influence behind the legislators’ decision to ditch APGA. What seemed like his self alienation from the party, made the suggestion of Obi’s connection with the decamping plausible. What now can be said with his ultimate defection three months later?
For sure, no one should begrudge Obi and his co – travellers their new political preferences. Many are however puzzled by the ease with which Obi could jettison the APGA brand after 12 years of shared aspiration and struggle dating back to 2003. Whatever challenges the former governor may have been faced with since leaving office, it is unhelpful seeking to make APGA a scapegoat for his new political adventure. The APGA defectors are entitled to position themselves for the 2015 and even 2019 permutations in any party they believe can serve their aspirations. But to say that the problem is with APGA because the party is no longer what it used to be raises a number of questions.
What has changed in APGA? And when did these supposed reverses take place in the 12 years life of the party? Are APGA’s fortunes in the past eight years commensurate with the opportunities available for growing the party? What is the view of majority of APGA members on the role of leaders of the party in the matter of widening its frontiers? Is the notion of a derailed APGA shared by its teeming membership?
You would expect a political party in which the centre no longer holds to be rocking with discontent. This is not true of the APGA led by Governor Willie Obiano and Chief Victor Umeh. A sense of solidarity is discernible in the way party faithful have responded to the new initiatives of the leadership. It is remarkable that in just five months of coming into office, Obiano alongside Umeh had gone to Owerri to rouse the Imo State chapter of the party to greater strength. At the time Obi was declaring for the PDP at his house in Onitsha, Umeh was at Asaba receiving politicians from other parties into APGA.
Whether they are conscious of it or not, the efforts of some APGA defectors at devaluing the party in the rating of the public fit into the agenda by sections of the political class to narrow the democratic space. We are presently witnessing a new phase of the long campaign to discredit multi party democracy as a drawback to Nigeria’s development.
The ruling political elite and their rival investors in empireship are going to great length to propagate the myth of a two-party system as the most rewarding form of participatory democracy. It is also the mission of this establishment to sell the world the dummy that the two-party brand is the popular choice of Nigerians by using every available means to shrink the space for free political association.
Recall that it took a 2002 Supreme Court verdict before new political parties hitherto blocked by officialdom berthed on the Fourth Republic scene. Employing the legalism of parliamentary acts and administrative processes within their influence, the intellectual wing of the cabal insists on the right of the electoral body to deregister political parties for so-called dismal performance.
But on the compelling lobby for implementation of the Mohammed Uwais electoral reforms that promise to pave the way for fair and credible elections, mum is the word from the experts of dual party carriageway.
Alongside an oiled propaganda that seeks to depict independent and ‘smaller’ parties as weak, disorganised, dysfunctional and unnecessary burden on our ballot papers, resistant parties that refuse to collapse into either of the dominant political divide are also prone to destabilisation plots. Such parties are particularly targets of poaching.
The question to ask is why considerable time and resources are being expended on containing parties like APGA if really they have lost focus and are now irrelevant.
•Mr Ifeanyi Afuba a member of APGA, wrote from Nimo, Anambra State .
- See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/10/apga-bashing-season-defections/#sthash.vwpiTAiw.dpuf•Mr Ifeanyi Afuba a member of APGA, wrote from Nimo, Anambra State .
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