Nigeria is 55 today, having been liberated from the clutches of British rule in 1960.
The country has since 1963, when it became a republic, continued to toe political party lines, which has also, ever since, thrown up the necessity for a vibrant opposition in the system.
However, within these years, there had been military interregnum, during which periods soldiers ruled with impunity.
While the military lasted, it tolerated no opposition. Nonetheless, there was always stiff resistance from some democratic elements who insisted on the enthronement of “government of the people, by the people and for the people.” Many of those in such a struggle, who operated under various groups, either paid the supreme price or have some scars to show for it, even today.
Over the years, many parties have evolved and fizzled away. While some were formed to really struggle for positions in the nation’s political space, some others were merely platforms used by their founders to achieve some selfish gains.
Observers say that never in the history of Nigeria had opposition lost focus than since the return of the country to civil rule in 1999. According to them, unlike the credible opposition that featured in the First Republic, what is happening now on the political turf is purely a reflection of how badly the country has fared in its political trajectory.
A legal practitioner, who chose to remain anonymous, said: “Some of the reasons for the lack-lustre opposition we have been witnessing particularly, since 1999, have to do with the fact that Nigerian political parties no longer possess features of political parties such as ideology, party manifestoes and a bonding of like-minded people. What we have nowadays are parties of strange bed-fellows who see the parties as mere platforms and vehicles to achieving an ambition. That is why we see politicians jump from one party to another. Politicians no longer have personal attachment to parties. Today, all the parties are engaged in intra-party conflicts rather than embark on programmes that would benefit the masses.”
Recalling the robust opposition that featured in the days of Obafemi Awolowo, a publicist and chief executive officer at Wilson & Weizmann Associates Limited, Chidi Amuta, said the crop of today’s politicians is deficient of the craft.
Amuta said that the role of a credible opposition in a democratic dispensation is to intelligently challenge government policies that are not working or taking a sitting government to task on account of non-performance in the interest of the populace.
Making allusion to what transpired in the administration of Goodluck Jonathan, the author of many books said: “Some people sit down in Abuja and play with statistics; they say ‘O, we’re now the largest economy in Africa’, but the numbers don’t add up. Where’s the infrastructure, where’s access to employment, how many Nigerians have access to loans, how many of those working own their individual homes, and how many people have access to decent water, electricity, etc? And there’s no road. These should be the concern of any government that worth its name, and of course, the concern of any credible opposition. The unfortunate thing is that they don’t have anybody to challenge them.”
According to him, “When Awolowo was alive, once the Federal Government released its budget, he would release his own. Awolowo would release its own budget based on facts and figures. In fact, he had superior facts than government. Today, we are doing APC versus PDP. When the immediate past administration was there, if Jonathan were to close his mouth, APC would not have anything to say because they only waited for the man to open his mouth and say something, then APC would now counter; there’s nothing else they were doing. But Awo had his own budget, school enrolment, even facts and figures from the Central Bank. He was the one who warned that at the rate Nigeria was borrowing we would get into trouble in the next 10 years, and it happened. That’s the type of opposition we are talking about.”
On what the role of an opposition should be in a democracy, Martins Onovo, former presidential candidate of the National Conscience Party (NCP) in the 2015 general election, said: “We have to be clear about the whole meaning and essence of opposition in a democracy. An opposition is an alternative to the government in power. The opposition being an alternative, critiques government policies, offers its own solution; presents and proclaims its own alternative so that the electorate can be better informed and put in the right position to make a right judgment. We are no longer in a military regime, to that end, the opposition presents alternative policies for the electorate to see what an ideal situation should be.
“That is also what the media has failed to do. It is the media that has the intellectual problem of not bringing up issues that are of interest to the electorate. We saw a situation where people sponsored their own elections with public funds. The media should have questioned that. The use of public funds put some people at an advantage over others. We do not begrudge them over whatever position they occupy, but our concern is that some people had an opportunity to spend more money than others; if it were from their pockets, we would have not bothered. During the elections, public funds were used to place adverts in the print and electronic media and huge sums of money was spent. And because of the public funds available to them, they were placed at an advantage over others and nobody asked questions. The media never queried the source of the money.
Today, many states cannot pay workers’ salaries because they wasted the money on election sponsorship. In Anambra State, Governor Willie Obiano is not only paying salaries, he has increased workers’ salaries, because there was no sponsorship of election.
“The National Conscience Party as a political party is playing well its role as an opposition. We have our manifesto about what we promised to do for the Nigerian people; although we did not win the election, we are still following our programmes. We will continue to do so. As an opposition party, we respond to issues in society. For instance, we responded on the issues of Boko Haram, Buhari’s 100 days in office, and we are going to respond to the Saraki’s issue. That’s how we are playing our opposition role,” Onovo said.
Dauda Birma, a former presidential aspirant and minister of Education in the Sani Abacha regime, said robust opposition has been lacking since 1999, noting that politicians may have misunderstood the real essence of opposition as they employ uncouth language against the party in power.
“I don’t see what is going on now as a credible way of playing the role of opposition. Some people think it is about using abusive language against the party in power. Before now, opposition groups did not speak with a voice; but when in 2015 they decided to come together, they were able to wrest power from a sitting government. Opposition should be much more elevated and honourable; it is not about abusing people or using uncouth language. One can say that the opposition being provided by the PDP is not credible and not meaningful. What we have now is nothing near it at all.
“The PDP has all along been divided within itself; many of those in the party are just there for the sake of what they can get from the system, not for the love of country or humanity. That’s how they pushed away Bamanga Tukur, a former national chairman of the party, because of selfish ambition of those who wanted to be president. Now, you do not assume the role of an opposition by manufacturing falsehood. You play the opposition by taking the party in power to task- pointing areas of focus; drawing the people’s attention to the promises of government that have not been fulfilled. Mind you, all these must be done in a very constructive manner.”
Ebenezer Babatope, a former Transport minister and newspaper columnist, said that opposition was very important in a democratic setting.
Speaking with BusinessDay, the Osun State-born politician, said: “Without anybody over-flogging the issue of opposition, it is very, very important. It is to maintain checks and balances in the system. Both government and opposition complement each other to achieve a credible democratic culture in society.”
According to him, “Nigerians have been very lucky that we have not had, at least since 1999, a situation where the voice of the opposition is not heard or where a party in power is not tolerant of the opposition. Today, the PDP is in the opposition; we are not ashamed about it and we are not shying away from our responsibility as an opposition. We shall continue to provide that credible opposition until 2019 when we shall reclaim power.”
Although Ike Ekweremadu, deputy Senate president, had, before the inauguration of the present government, said the PDP would provide credible and responsible opposition to deepen democracy and promote good governance in Nigeria, the APC believes that the way the umbrella party is going about it is as ejaculatory as it is infantile.
Lai Mohammed, national publicity secretary, APC, recently chided the PDP, saying it lacked all it takes to provide any worthwhile opposition to the APC-led Federal Government “if its spokesman continues to issue convoluted and fustian statements just so that he can be in the news.”
According to Mohammed, “To be in opposition does not mean you have to constitute yourself to a nuisance by rushing to the press with all sorts of hot air statements. It is the quality, rather than the frequency, of your interventions that makes you relevant as an opposition in a democracy.”