VIABLE AND FORMIDABLE OPPOSITION FROM APC FORCING JONATHAN AND PDP TO DO A RETHINK President Jonathan will square off with General Buhari in a few weeks for the presidency of Nigeria. Unfortunately, Nigerians have been presented with a choice between the devil and the deep sea because the two men are deeply flawed if the goal here is to select a messiah for an ailing nation! After six years in office, the current president cannot be said to have done anything remarkable enough to warrant another term that will push his tenure into a total of 10 years. He basically turned his back on the war against corruption because every time one looks, his administration seems to be clearing and setting free people who had hitherto been indicted for corruption and even elevating them to greater positions of authority in the PDP. Infrastructure development has not fared much better: Projects like the second Nigeria Bridge continue to stall. The power sector that Jonathan himself once said he was obligated to fix is still groaning under the yoke of underperformance. Huge amounts of money that should go into improving Nigeria is being used by the presidency to acquire unneeded airplanes and engage in profligacy. A large chunk of the budget is being used for food and entertainment in Aso Rock and estacode for the retinue of staff that travel abroad with the president. Most of all, security situation continues to worsen and there seems to be no discernible way out of the mess. With all these deficiencies, reelecting Jonathan to office will make no sense. On the other hand, General Buhari is not better. His biggest claim to fame is that he ruled Nigeria with iron hand, so much so that Nigerians were temporarily frightened into behaving the way they should as human beings. He does not have enough macro and micro economic experience that Nigerians need at this time of tumbling oil prices to sustain her economy and move her in the direction of diversification. Of course some see him as a religious fundamentalist that may make the security situation worse in the country if elected. So voting Buhari into office is not a great alternative either. The reader can already tell that this commentator is not enamored by the prospects of either Buhari or Jonathan as Nigerian president. However, a prediction I made after APC merger is slowly beginning to take hold. In an article published on Nigeriaworld, November 30, 2013 entitled, “PDP-APC Merger Will Be Good for Democracy If It Endures”, I posited that the merger will present a viable opposition to and force PDP to truly start competing for the people’s votes and hence do what they hitherto promised to do if voted for. Before now, PDP has arrogantly been telling Nigerians that the party will remain in power for 50 years to come. They predicated their prognostication on the fact that the party was the only viable one with structures in all regions of the federation. It was a well-financed political machine that most prominent Nigerians pitched their tent with. Their sense of invincibility made members of the party to take Nigerians for granted knowing that their sheer size and reach will make it hard for Nigerians to get an alternative or for any other party to dislodge them in federal elections. The result was that no matter how bad a PDP presidential candidate was, no matter how much the candidate was despised, no matter how ineffective, just the mere fact of being in the PDP guaranteed that the person will get into or stay in power. General Obasanjo enjoyed two terms in spite of his tyrannical tendencies and the fact that he achieved very little. At the end of his tenure and again because there was no viable opposition, Obasanjo handpicked a sickly successor! Even though Nigerians knew that he was imposing a sick man on them, the overpowering influence of the party drowned out the voices of reason and hence a sick man was thrust upon the nation by an overbearing party and president. The rest is history but here we are again stuck with an ineffective president. But when PDP thought that they were about to coast home again in the presidential elections, a seeming monkey wrench was tossed into their plan by APC merger. There is now a viable opposition party ready to give PDP a run for its money. The days of presidential election walk-overs for PDP are over. When APC merger was concluded, I noted that it was the greatest thing that would happen to Nigeria. I was not saying that as an endorsement of APC because they may even be worse than PDP, but from the perspective that for once, the votes of Nigerians would be competed for. The parties would be forced to actually campaign and tell the people what they would do. There would be no anointments because the masses would make the final choice. This writer recalls that PDP seemed unperturbed when the merger initially took place but the merger has produced a party strong enough and well-financed to challenge PDP. Analysts predict that APC would pull a lot of votes from the north, get a lot of votes from the south west because of Tinubu and Fashola and make sizable inroads into the South east and even the south south. This scenario has stoked a lot of panic in the PDP. The places and people that PDP once took for granted, the zones they once failed to campaign in because they felt they were theirs are now very competitive. This is politics at its finest! When you have such situations in any democracy, politicians suddenly remember that the final arbiters are the voters and they start taking them serious, start going to them to canvass for votes and start doing what they originally said they would do if elected. Now, it may be that in the final analysis, PDP will eke out a win but even if they do, PDP will never be the same in governance. They will now be forced to work to establish a trail of achievements. They will want to truly build roads, seriously tackle youth unemployment, diversify the economy, bring insecurity to tolerable levels and improve education so that they would have worthy legacies to brandish before Nigerians when they go before them next time for votes. That is good for Nigeria. Jonathan seems to have now gotten the message that he will no longer be handed the presidency on a platter of gold as before. He now responds to criticisms he would have dismissed before as idle talk. He tells Nigerians who feel he is not doing much to secure the country that his administration is doing some behind the scenes stuff. To those who accused his administration of corruption, he recently responded that he is “coming up with anti-corruption plan”. This statement is problematic in itself. If after 6 years as president he is still does not have an anti-corruption plan, it is a clear indication that his government is rudderless on that issue. Nonetheless, he is being forced to tell Nigerians why he should be reelected, something that would not have happened if we did not have a viable opposition as before. On the part of APC, they are being forced to do things they may not have done before. In the past, Buhari never worried about the perception of him as a religious fundamentalist. As such he rarely addressed that issue. But he has been forced to answer that and even begin to soften his image by the way he dresses. He now tries to defend his record when he was in power for two years and when he headed the PTF. He has been forced to start telling Nigerians how he would govern apart from just saying he would fight corruption. Bottom line is that no matter what political spectrum Nigerians are in, no matter what political camp they pitch their tents, they should be delighted that a new era is emerging in Nigerian politics: An era of competitive presidential politics where one party can no longer take them for granted. This guarantees that the presidential candidates will listen more to the people and try to do more of the bidding of the people if elected. Having viable opposition is the first step towards getting where Nigeria needs to be. Happy New Year to My Readers HERE I STAND! Alfred Obiora Uzokwe, Author of Surviving in Biafra - The Story of the Nigerian Civil War
Posted on: Tue, 06 Jan 2015 07:03:21 +0000
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