PDP, APC: Which is the villainous party?
By Aminu Habibu Jahun Assuming a politically conscious Nigerian left for outer space in early 1999, he would have left hopeful that at least unbridled impunity by those welding political power, which dominated the political landscape in Nigeria, would have ended by the time he would return, as non-military politicians were poised to free […]
By Aminu Habibu Jahun
Assuming a politically conscious Nigerian left for outer space in early 1999, he would have left hopeful that at least unbridled impunity by those welding political power, which dominated the political landscape in Nigeria, would have ended by the time he would return, as non-military politicians were poised to free Nigeria from the tight grip of the military usurpers if their words were supposed to be their bonds.
If the person returned 16 years later in 2015, he would bulge his eyes in disbelief, whether he was in Nigeria, as the nation was about to burst from the self-serving indulgences of the supposed democrats who displaced the military, as highlighted by the campaigns.
For almost 23 years of the 4th Republic, the dominant parties, PDP and APC, constitute the alternate ruling houses in Nigeria. Like the acrimonious 2015 general elections, in the build up to the next elections in 2023, the political atmosphere is getting charged, with accusations and counter-accusations of failures and successes by the leading opposition party, PDP and the ruling APC. One is amused by all these and would like to know if: the parties are birds of the same feathers? If not, how different are they from one another? Given their antecedents, which is the villainous party and the righteous other?
According to a typology of political parties, PDP and APC can be identified as catch-all parties with wide membership bases, accommodative of different political viewpoints. The PDP is an offshoot of different political backgrounds rooted in ideologically diverse political parties of earlier republics; whilst the former ANPP and AC which merged with CPC to form the APC were similarly based. Ideologically, both are right of centre parties upholding liberalist values. And the motivation for their formation minus the CPC was largely to repel the military and secure political power to advance private interests with public concern as a subsidiary matter, with an exception to the rule in a few places, revealed by the conduct of public affairs over the years. That was why beyond deliverance from the military, there were more subtle drive and eagerness for what could be pilfered from the state than how to transform the lives of Nigerians from their low human development thresholds. NEPU and AG of the First Republic, or UPN and PRP of the Second Republic, framed more concern for the plight of downtrodden Nigerians. Or, where even they express a modicum of concern, it is generally expressed not in dissimilar substances reflective of divergence of approach to the centrality of the common man as the focus of their public policies. That is not surprising, as most of their founding members have had a common parasitic association with the Nigerian state, which provided a platform for personal enrichment.
In the United States the alternate ruling parties, the Democratic and Republican parties, even when they share the American perspective of muscular projections, which makes the US in unending wars around the world, to control vital global resources, are palpably different to the American electorate. The GOP in deference to neoliberal values, subordinates all else to corporate interests, and in a frightening phobia against non-white Americans and immigrants, increasingly pushes America for white Americans, whilst the Democratic Party promotes American pluralism and liberalist values. Are there such sharp dividing attributes between the PDP and APC in Nigeria?
In fundamentals, the seeming non distinctiveness of one from the other, the apparent sameness and convergence of defining characteristics, the confluence of interlocking traits transcend to executive driven party management with a high turnover of national leaderships, domineering state governors inhibitive of internal party democracy, submissive state legislative assemblies and national assembly driven by unchanging interests and pursuits. This defining similarity finds expression in the effortless interchangeability of aggrieved members from one party to the other.
The APC’s triple parentage availed it massive incumbency powers in the respective states of its merging parties, whilst the nPDP, a powerful breakaway faction of some PDP governors compounded `it’ in their states on the back of which APC rode to electoral victory in 2015. Along with the defections of high profile PDP politicians into the ruling party, APC acquired a peculiar PDP slant responsible for the congruence of attributes, tempers, characters and dispositions of the two parties.
But even Siamese twins sharing bodily organs differ in certain respects, talk less of identical political parties. The populist character of the APC in 2015 or thereabout, underscored its difference from the PDP, as the transparency, anti-corruption disposition and the saviour image of Gen Muhammadu Buhari, the founder of CPC, like a colossus, dominated and almost single-handedly shaped the populist base of the APC in its formative stages. But even the PDP raised similar concerns against corruption as its government established ICPC and EFCC to fight corruption, in which its war against corruption, even if unsatisfactory to Nigerians was undertaken. APC populism engendered by its positive perception gave the party a messianic touch; as the PDP became the villain, the punch bag of Nigerians, the party to be displaced at all costs to rescue Nigeria from the brink; which engendered in ordinary Nigerians a feeling that the era of life more abundant would come no sooner than the APC government was inaugurated in May 2015, which facilitated wild uncontainable expectations all over the country. And the ordinary man revelling in his new role as a political kingmaker and confident that with PMB, the tribune of the people on top of government, the gains of democracy would multiply and sufficiently reach everyone and everywhere. Today, this perception dangles like a sword of Damocles over the party. By the end of its second tenure in 2023, when it would have spent half the tenure of PDP, Nigerians would discover whether the populist hopes in APC were misplaced or not, depending on the ease or difficulty of eking a living and the security of lives and properties in Nigeria. And then, they would conclude whether they have been taken for an agonising indeterminate political charade over these years or not.
No matter the atrocities and negative perception of the PDP, it virtuously understood and appreciated the mood of Nigerians in 2015 and therefore made no decisive efforts to upstage the APC victory. If the APC between now and the end of its second tenure is able to fully deliver its campaign promises: to revitalise the economy, end corruption in government and secure Nigeria, it would stand a high chance of re-election. And if not, it would be virtuous to copy the PDP if a similar mood to that of 2015 were to unfold in 2023, otherwise, it would end up a villainous party.
Jahun sent this from the United States