IN spite of parading several political parties, Nigeria is practically a one-party dictatorship. It can even be argued that the same political party, albeit under different names, has always ruled the country. And that this party, in its various incarnations, has either been founded, sponsored, or adopted, by politicians with the same ideological badge and world-view, from the same zone of the country. Other political formations, owing to the peculiarities of the political system, have either not been able, or allowed, to attain power. Generally frustrated and harassed, as if they were illegal or subversive associations, these opposition parties have always existed on sufferance.
The situation since 2003, when former President Olusegun Obasanjo embarked on his schemes to extend his tenure for life, has seen an intensification by the ruling party of tendencies like the virtual privatisation of the police and other security organs; the quasi conversion of the electoral commission into a partisan instrument for manipulating elections against opposition parties; and the destruction of any of these parties potentially capable of becoming a viable rival for power. Some of these aggravated tendencies recall the violence of military rule - the physical elimination of people influential enough (like late Justice Minister Bola Ige) to challenge the Peoples Democratic Party's (PDP's) bid for total power, falls in this category. The other tendencies are, ultimately, symptoms of problems within the political system that hark back to the structural defects of the Nigerian colonial state itself.
At independence, the Nigerian "federation" was structurally and constitutionally designed in such a way that its Northern Region could always control the central government, with or without political support from the rest of the country. Apart from the vast landmass and the dominant population figure gratuitously allocated to it, the North was awarded the same number of seats in the central legislature as both the Eastern and Western Regions combined. From that point onwards, the prime political objective of the leaders of Northern Nigeria, who, ipso facto, became the "ordained" rulers of the country, was to maintain the constitutional and political privileges of the Nigerian independence settlement. Indeed, subsequent adjustments of this political construction, especially through states creation by military dictators, all of whom were of Northern extraction, were covert exercises in gerrymandering, which accentuated the federation's existing lopsidedness, and enhanced the North's inherent advantages vis-�-vis the rest of the country.
The emergent Nigerian political system was thus the product of a skewed power structure. Aside from the forays into Northern Nigeria by opposition parties, notably by Awolowo's Action Group (AG), it was the politics of hegemony, through which the Northern leaders sought to sustain their predominance, that dictated the character of this emerging political system. Similarly, it was the architects of these hegemonic political schemes that eventually formed the nucleus of what became the Nigerian oligarchy. In view of their role in contriving the political system which has yielded the present almighty, all-conquering, political party in Nigeria, it is necessary to delineate the character of this ruling group.
The core of the Nigerian oligarchy consists of two amorphous and shadowy but powerful cabals. The first of these can be traced to the Northern Nigerian ruling aristocracy which became "modernised" and privileged by the vagaries of colonial rule and the transfer of power at Nigeria's political independence. The second consists of prominent retired military officers who have become quasi political surrogates of the military establishment, and had exploited the decades of military rule to insinuate themselves into the ranks of Nigeria's power aristocracy.
The Nigerian oligarchy's main objective is the rulership of Nigeria in perpetuity. This implies the holding, by Northerners, of the position of president, and of strategic institutions for security, defence, economic resources, finance and the judiciary. However, it is during crises of political succession, such as turbulent transfers of power, coups, or attempts by incumbent dictators to perpetuate themselves in office, that these power brokers are most active. A recent instance was the 1998 interregnum, when it became necessary to "balance the equation" of Abacha's sudden death with the pending fate of the detained winner of the 1993 presidential election, Bashorun M.K.O. Abiola, who, accordingly, died in mysterious circumstances!
The power wielded by the oligarchy is ultimately some kind of investment for pecuniary, if not economic, gains. For, with the exception of its members who are nouveaux-riches retired military officers, the oligarchy is not a landowning or entrepreneurial class. It is a group that trades its political capital for government patronage, such as sinecures and plum directorships of parastatals, banks etc, or for the dream price of oil blocks. The Nigerian oligarchy are thus unconscionable human parasites.
How, then, did this oligarchy go about masterminding the system that has hitherto defied all efforts at democratisation, while producing the current de facto dictatorship of the PDP? First, the piecemeal centralisation effected by the military between 1966 and 1979 was incorporated into the constitution which instituted presidential rule in 1979. Then, in place of the defunct Northern Peoples Congress, another ruling party, the National Party of Nigeria (NPN), with a seemingly national, rather than regional image, was founded. The construction of a quasi pan-Nigerian political coalition was relatively easy in a society where politics is mainly about sharing of spoils; and where sponsorship for political office by the party of the "ordained" rulers is a surer avenue to wealth than the ownership of a thriving prosperity gospel church.
Sure enough, the NPN attracted prominent business and other magnates across Nigeria, as well as ambitious aspirants for political office, and malcontents and renegades from earlier political groupings. In 1999, the NPN reincarnated as the PDP, which henceforth became a haven for retired officers from the armed forces, apart from providing a congenial home for all sorts of charlatans, political marauders, and fair-weather "progressives". Thus, in addition to the prior centralisation by the oligarchy's military allies, which made the "federal" government the depository of the country's entire revenue, we now had an intimidating "national" party. The injection of copious doses of fraud, combined with political assassinations and related crimes from just before 2003 onwards, would thereafter ensure that the PDP remained the sole ruling party in the country.
Before commenting on how well the idea of a "national" party has served the cause of one-party dictatorship, it is important to observe that national as the NPN was supposed to be, a prominent Northern politician, Umaru Dikko, had to rebuke M.K.O. Abiola in 1983 when, as a member of that party, the latter indicated his intention to run for president, only to be told that the presidential ticket was not for sale to the highest bidder. Some months later, as the party was in the process of rigging itself back into power, A.M.A. Akinloye, its chairman told all Nigerians that the military was the only opposition party in Nigeria, a virtual declaration of the NPN as the de facto sole political party. But whether it was truly national, or harboured hierarchical tendencies, it must be admitted that the putting together of the NPN (and later the PDP), did go a long way in solving the problem of creating a quasi mass party as an instrument of dictatorship by a cabal. The pretensions to being pan-Nigerian certainly reconciled a substantial part of the political elite to the continuing domination of the country by an exclusive power aristocracy.
Besides, the jamboree masquerading as a national party concretised the reactionary and nihilistic philosphy of a "mainstream", "come-and-eat" politics, consecrating it as a patriotic, pan-Nigerian politics of consensus. This was no mean achievement. The idea duly salved the conscience of many PDP adherents, who had renounced their past as posturing "progressives", enabling them to believe that they were still serving the country even after electing to go where they could now gorge their stomachs. Otherwise, how could the Omoboriowo and Babatope of this world become "chieftains" of a party that sets little store by the political values and national ideals these men had previously proclaimed, parrot fashion?
The Nigerian de facto one-party dictatorship is thus a system which ensures that one sole party, representing a particular ideological group and interest, is always in power, while none of the other parties in opposition can ever aspire to win an election and form the government. This state of affairs has several implications. For example, the emasculation of the opposition means that the latter cannot serve as a check on the government by making it accountable to the people. Clearly, a weak opposition can hardly contribute to the running of the country, by subjecting official policies to criticism and offering useful ideas and alternative programmes or strategies of development.
Above all, the PDP, like the defunct single parties of Eastern Europe, is a dictatorship of party bosses. These party "chieftains" specialise in perverting the democratic process, and in abusing the electoral commission and state organs to rig elections at all levels. State governors, for example, far from being representatives of, and accountable to the people, are often creatures of party "godfathers", and ultimately the ajele, that is, agents of the PDP boss of bosses in Abuja. A similar procedure of (s)election applies to the so-called legislators, many of whom have been described, with justification, as unconvicted felons, and dubious characters.
How dictatorial the PDP chief party boss, the president, could be was amply shown by Gen. Obasanjo who, as president, defied the constitution and state institutions to impose governors and legislators on his party and on the country; and in 2007, single-handedly decided that Yar'Adua would succeed him as president. He also took major decisions and appropriated money without reference to the National Assembly. But as he could not dictate verdicts to the courts, he simply ignored those of their rulings he did not approve of.
Behind the facade of multi-party democratic governance, then, Nigeria is a dictatorship of informal conspiratorial cabals, and of party bigwigs directing the PDP, and manipulating things for personal and class interests. Under the circumstances, and given the country's warped political structure, and the implacable determination of the Nigerian oligarchy to sustain that structure, it is impossible to address the "national question". Indeed, those who run the country hardly acknowledge any "national question" waiting to be resolved. Hence, successive administrations skirt around crucial national issues like fundamental reforms of the polity. Likewise, the devastating insurrection in the Niger Delta is an occasion for peddling "amnesties", while ignoring the yearning of the abused people of this region and of those from other parts of the country for a nation of equal citizens, in place of the present Nigeria of latter-day "colonial" rulers and their hapless subjects. And thus all hopes of positive, meaningful change are indefinitely deferred, if not sealed, as the "giant of Africa" lumbers inexorably on towards state failure and the Armageddon.
* Dr. Akinola lives in Ibadan, Oyo state
