Rethinking Our Failed Party System

It is quite disturbing that a party which has a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) as it’s number two man is the one showing such a flagrant disregard for the rule of law.

A party that rode on the back of hate speech and social media into the office now wants to censor social media and “hate speech”. The same party that arguably came in through Nigeria’s first truly democratic election where votes actually counted now seizes the polling booths with hoodlums and security forces.

Nigerians have not only had to suffer through lack of empathetic leaders, but we may also be suffering from a total lack of leadership. This is not a complete shock as we do not practice the politics of nationalism but the politics of self service.

Sadly, there is no clear end in sight as there is barely an opposition. People will argue that the main opposition party has been impoverished and threatened which is true, but the real question remains how did they get there? A social media user once said: the ruling party has spent so much time playing opposition they never learned how to lead, the then ruling party spent so much time “ruling” and they forgot how to play opposition.

This in my opinion is a fair assessment. The then ruling party spent so much time accruing personal wealth that they forgot about good governance. With a retired Major General playing Santa Claus with public funds and party members acting like Christmas came early, they forgot the proverb about the man who built his house on the sand and his counterpart who built his on a rock. Instead of putting money into the country and building a good reputation for their party, they were enriching their personal purses and we saw the result of that.

Now, when the time has come for them to show out in all of their might, the elephant has become an ant. The now ruling party did its homework and got a new playbook different from the usual Nigerian politics playbook; rule number one, divide and conquer.

They played on their greed and made sure they were scattered. It is written in the Bible that “A house divided in itself cannot stand”. Once that was achieved, rule number two came to play, impoverish them, and that was what we spent the past four years doing “fighting corruption”.

When that was done, where the party has been bled dry, majority of the party members defected and anyone who wants to play the Messiah is threatened into submission. The party is then rendered a ghost in a shell, anyone with skeletons in his cupboard quickly decamped to the ruling party to avoid persecution following the popular saying “If you cannot beat them, join them”.

It is a sad state of affairs but it is where we have found ourselves, where the political class is a mirror of the citizens’ greed. Yes it is easier to blame our woes on our leaders but the truth is they are a reflection of our society. Joseph de Maistre once said, “Every nation gets the government it deserves”.

We elect or support party ‘hoppers’ simply because they have the next sweet things to tell us or because we got N2,000 and/or a bag of rice and groundnut oil. This is what has encouraged these politicians to play on our intelligence. If your employee changes jobs every two months would you deem him employable? Why then do we keep putting the same crop of people in power simply because they went under a different party?

In developed countries, a person’s ideal almost always aligns with that of the party he belongs to. Take America for example, you know the Republicans are conservatives who embrace economic development and America first ideals while the Democrats are the progressives who believe in inclusion and diversity above all else, these are what these parties preach.

In Nigeria do we even know what any party stands for or what their ethos are? This is why you will hardly see serious politicians cross from one party to another in America because your goals mostly have to align with the party’s but do Nigerian parties even have any agenda or they just go where the wind takes them? We just keep voting in the same people with no values or clear cut agenda under the guise of a party, forgetting that these parties are nothing more than posters for these politicians; they can be torn any day if it no longer serves their interest.

Well, now we have a party in power that has returned us to oligarchy where nothing and no one matters but the ruling class and power must be seized by force. It does not matter what the will or wish of the people is but what the will of the ‘cabals’ are. With so much violence marring all the recently concluded elections, are we not sleeping with the proverbial fire on our roofs?

They are prepared for 2023, but who will save us? Is it the party that is a shadow of itself or the individual parties who could not even set aside their personal agendas to form an alliance in the last election?

It is high time we set aside our party biases and realise that there is no difference in the individuals. It is only the party that keeps changing, the people do not as evidenced by the retired Major General who told us he is ready to follow civilian rule but has disobeyed almost every court order. We thought the people changed once the party changed, we were wrong, but have we learnt?

 

Written by Funto Babawale

Babawale, a social commentator writes from Lagos, Nigeria.