It was Edmund Burke, an Irish philosopher, who defined the Political Party as a body of men united to promote a joint endeavour, in line with the national interest, in which they all agreed.
In other words, a political Party must be a conglomerate of like minds driven by an agreed cause that seeks to benefit the national interest and by extension, the interest and well-being of the citizens.
But the recent surge of significant defections from the PDP to the ruling Party, the APC in an increased political tension in the lead-up to the 2027 general elections, is nothing close to the collective national interest but crass political opportunism and mercantilism masquerading as strategy.
Historically speaking, this is not the first time we’ve had a mass defection from politicians to strange political nests against their professed but feigned ideological leaning.
Right from the first Republic when the Northern People’s Congress ( NPC) used alliances and federal might to coerce other parties to submission while silencing the voice of the opposition, to the days of the National Party of Nigeria ( NPN) in the Second Republic, where Party politics was synonymous to aligning with the reckless politics of the centre, it has always been the same dance step of the rightness of political power and might.
In the military-midwife political era, especially in the days of the bespectacled Gen Sani Abacha, all the then five political parties, United Nigeria Congress Party ( UNCP), Congress for National Consensus ( CNC), Grassroot Democracy Movement (GDM), Democratic Party of Nigeria (DPN) and National Center Party of Nigeria (NCPN) adopted Abacha as their “consensus” candidate. The late Cicero, Chief Bola Ige, derisively described the Parties then as “the five fingers of a leprous hand”.
There’s no arguing with the fact that President Tinubu’s appetite for political omnipresence, is putting the Nigerian political landscape on a stressful overdrive and trepidation. This is reflected in the massive decamping of key politicians in the rival PDP, the latest of which is the Vice-presidential candidate of the PDP in the 2023 Presidential election, Dr Ifeanyi Okowa and his godson, the Governor of Delta State, Hon Sheriff Oborevwori.
The argument by political pundits on this recent worrisome development has been interesting, intriguing, altruistic and myopic all at the same time. Some have argued that politics is about winning your opponents to your side to help in fulfilling your aggregated goals in line with your party’s ideological leaning etc.
The majority are saying that the Byzantine brand of politics being played by the ruling Party, the APC, is a zero-some game aimed at deleting the opposition in a bid to run “democratic” totalitarianism, where power is permanently captured and kept in the kitty of the ultimate Godfather, with an enforced template for “posterity” as was done in Lagos State.
This they fear, will turn the nation into a practical one-party state, (despite the existence of many other toothless parties) a threat to peace, political freedom and a shrinking of the political space in a multiethnic society like ours. Yet, there’s this interesting group that believes that the mad rush to join the ruling Party by prominent opposition politicians is not a result of the ruling party’s performance or ideology but a promise of “protection” and the ” forgiveness of the sins” they committed for which they can be hunted by anti-corruption agencies usually unleashed on the opposition by the centre.
Then again, the usual politics of distrust and mistrust by the Nigerian competing regions of North and South was not left out. There’s an angle being peddled by the supporters of the mass defection, especially of the Southern politicians, as a kind of support for and consolidation of a Southern presidency in 2027. They argued that the North was bent on “retrieving” political power from the South in 2027 when the South was yet to complete her term of eight years.
They point to the fact that the regrouping of the northern politicians against President Tinubu is a collective affront on the southern mandate and what it represents and this must be resisted by any means possible to avert the Goodluck Jonathan’s experience.
In all of this, what is most important, which remains unknown, is how this hullabaloo translates into building a nation of our dreams where Democracy is appreciated for what it is and not what greedy politicians have made it to be. In a nation where obedience and allegiance to political blocs or personalities get rewarded instead of performance, how do we trust this present potentially induced cross-carpeting as a normal feature of politicking in our tired democracy?
In conclusion, let me again revert to Edmund Burke in his work: “Thoughts On The Cause of the Current Discontent” I quote: “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle” Let every democrat, keep not silent.
