The democratic history of Nigeria cannot be found less interesting when placed side by side to those of the proponent nations of Britain, USA, France, etc except for its peculiarity in terms of deficiency in ideological leanings which under ideal situation ought to be one among major determinants of identity and identification.
A macroscopic look into democratic experience prior, during and post colonial era in the Nigeria nation state says volume about stakes that have been raised to constitute unit of identity and rallying point; ethnicity, regionalism, and in most dominant manner money politics which have over rode all other forms of definers.
In the first republic for instance, there was glaring prospect of building ideological towers in line with the Pan African spirit which was actually the driving force behind the agitations for political independence from the British authority symbolized by the large present of British technocrats and the Union Jack, but before long, regional sentiment infiltrated the terrain and we had the formation of political parties and followership mostly in line with the regional interests, with National Council for Nigeria and Cameroon (NCNC) holding preponderance in mostly Southern region and not the North.
With the almost seamless progression into the second republic, we saw more regionalized political parties with the AG (Action Group) heavily in the South-west, Northern People Congress (NPC) in the North, etc and this later became doctrine of the Nigerian body parties up to the current dispensation, where political parties are being tropicalised.
The Ideological frameworks which ought to collapse these primordial fences have long been in limbo or better still non existent.
Unarguably, the controversial zoning formula for rotational Presidency is an exclusive product of the regional consciousness that overrides Nigerianity.
In essence it is the continuation of the regional rivalry that held sway during regional governments under Premiers. This was the cankerworm that some military administrations especially those under Gen. Yakubu Gowon and Murtala Mohammed tried to abolish with creation of states to replace regional authorities, that formally had Sir Ahmadu Bello overseeing the North, Chief Obafemi Awolowo for the West and Chief Michael Okpara for the East.
However, with the return of democratic structures in 1999, the stage was set again with the adoption of the zoning arrangement in some political parties especially for the seat of the President which many said was ceded to the South-West for compensatory reason, but before the so called “gentle man arrangement” started, it had failed and woefully too especially with the interference of certain interests.
As a result, after 18 years, we are still wobbling in an issue that is a construct of a few.
A Nigeria State devoid of ideological framework with national outlook as it were as fertile is responsible for the ills of corruption bedeviling the nation as ethnicity is dragged in to scuttle culpability.
The issue of zoning of political offices in the country is unarguably the glaring symptom of the dearth of ideology, where region of origin has been prioritized rather than programmes of governance, where the faith of an office seeker is of paramount importance rather than the merits inherent in him.
A Nigeria built on ideological consideration possesses propensity of collapsing primordial consideration of faith, regionalism and ethnicity. It has the tendency of bringing together people of different regions in unison based on the views on issues they share and the commonality of ills they seek to address.
Political parties built on Ideology grounds could be that penancea that has eluded the Nigerian nationhood for decades.
For instance, the late progressive scholar, Dr. Bala Usman postulated that the Northern Element Progressive Union (NEPU) headed by the then sage Alhaji Aminu Kano enjoyed national appeal even though it failed to capture some Southern States because of its welfarist Ideology built on the talakawa (proletariat) cliché, the strength of that Ideology is located on the careful analysis of the economic fate of over 60% of Nigerians who at the time were below the U.N poverty benchmark of $1 per day.
His party got wide acceptance because it was built on masses – friendly postulations which in this case was devoid of regional considerations because all regions and creeds have the proletariat class.
We have witnessed unending defections from one political party to another by political office holders and appointees mostly from parties that provide prominence to the one in power without recourse to certain fundamentals that include vacating seats occupied. On most occasions, such cross – carpeting are excused for internal wrangling in the party thereby weakening opposition and all its pluses.
These actions many pundits describe, is a negation to the principle of honour that encourages honourable people to identify with a course they truly believe in and work assiduously to promote it at all meaningful course rather than boycotting it at the middle of nowhere.
In Nigeria, State Governors, Senators and Representatives in the National Assemblies, Local Government Chairmen and even Councillors have gone into all sorts of permutations mostly with parties in power to fetch them a defection against the Ideology they once believed in for which the electorate also voted them.
And because of the mad rush for the pasture and spoils of belonging to the party in power, the beauty of opposition has been slaughtered on the altar of greed and the result is the gradual drift towards one party state which is undoubtedly absurd for our kind of clime.
For over a month now, this country call Nigeria has been inundated by defections as politicians continue their jostle to be relevant and achieve strategic placements within and across party lines.
The defections have been fairly osmotic, with the solvent political gladiators moving more from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
It is worthy to recall that similar movements were observed in 2014, before the 2015 elections, as angry and displaced politicians moved from the then ruling PDP to the then opposition APC.
There will always be defections, perhaps not on the scale witnessed before the 2015 polls and this year’s, but the defections will in all likelihood continue to be anchored on extraneous and sometimes flimsy reasons rather than on solid and ideological factors.
As long as poverty subsists and overwhelms, and the country’s political and economic structures are not radically reformed and transformed, the attitude towards public office and politics will remain fundamentally narrow and predatory.
Politicians will, therefore, subordinate the more ennobling task of public service to the demeaning and amoral search for greener pastures.
It was important that both the ruling party and President Muhammadu Buhari correctly gauge the mood of the country and examine the factors that predispose Nigerian politics to the constant display of amorality witnessed in the past month, and earlier in 2014.
Sadly, the APC has been scurrilous in its dismissal of the defectors, and the President has on his own embraced grand moralisations, even viewing the defections as God’s pruning hook to sanitise and sanctify the ruling party.
It is not clear that they have accurately depicted a process that has become, to many, sickeningly familiar, for the defections, while sometimes and even often objectionable, are not a moral issue.
Going by the scale of the defections, they in fact indicate deep fissures within the polity and the grating mismatch between the yearnings of the electorate and the ambitions of their representatives.
The lessons from the spate of defection, is that politics in Nigeria is currently being regarded as an industry considering the prevailing harsh economic realities bedeviling the nation.
A cursory look at the workings of democracies in advanced nations will reveal that party memberships are caused by clear-cut manifestoes, built out of an Ideology, for instance, the United States of America’s two contenting political parties does not enjoy blind followership; the Democrats and Republicans have succeeded to carve manifestoes in line with the inherent peculiarities of the American society as a result, campaigns for votes are issue-based rather than propaganda, campaigns are designed along the basic issues of pressing rather than aspirant’s region of origin.
Prior to the November 16th, 2016, presidential election that brought Donald Trump into power; he had faced serious criticisms from his fellow Republican members, because of some of his campaign issues, but they never defected, all because of their ideological believe in the party, unfortunately that’s not the case in Nigeria.
Instead of engaging the PDP in a war of words, the ruling APC must make greater efforts to deconstruct the defection phenomenon within the context of Nigerian politics.
The party needs to eschew its simplistic understanding of the crisis; and particularly the president who wields inordinate influence over the party, to adopt a saner, more sensible and level-headed approach to reorienting Nigerian politics.
At the peak of the electioneering campaigns in 2014, the ruling APC administration had anchored its presidential election on combating corruption, poverty, insecurity and unemployment. Have they been able to fulfill those promises?
It is truly tragic that the APC, sensing that they cannot play the sublime politics evinced by their manifesto, appears to be treading the same thorny path that ultimately doomed their predecessor the PDP in 2015.
Therefore a nation without political Ideologies drawn from the desirable core values of the people is rather a disaster.
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