By Salihu
Moh. Lukman
Sometimes
in 2004, at an interactive session with Mr. Rodrigo de Rato, then visiting
Managing Director of International Monetary Fund (IMF), a member of President
Obasanjo's economic team who was a Minister emphatically announced that the
People’s Democratic Party (PDP) was in government, "not to practice
democracy but to defend democracy".
This
assertion was made against the background of opposition of Nigerians led by
Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) against the federal government reform policy of
deregulating the downstream petroleum sector. Apparently angered by NLC's
viewpoint that the deregulation policy was informed by neo-liberal capitalist
agenda of the IMF, the former Minister was reported to have told NLC that
"If Labour feels concerned about some of these policies, let it go and
form a communist party and form a government. But for this PDP-led government,
we cannot be discussing every policy with everybody".
Realities
may have changed, loyalties could have shifted and allegiances no longer the
same, although ideological claims may still be retained by all the 2004 actors,
including the former Minister. However, the message to NLC reflects the
contemptuous disposition of public officials and politicians to category of
people referred to as activists. These are mainly leaders of civil society,
trade unions, women, youths, persons with disability, non-governmental
organisations, etc. They were at the centre of all the barricades, picket lines,
campaigns against military rule in the 1980s and 90s.
Interestingly,
this very category of people decided not to join politics in 1998 when Gen.
Abdulsalami Abubakar announced the transition to civil rule. Not even the
appeal by Comrade Thabo Mbeki, then Vice President of South Africa, calling on
activist to engage the transition, moderated this decision. One of the
activists that was strongly opposed to participation and mobilised young people
to disrupt a meeting in Port Harcout in 1998 is today a Special Adviser to
President Goodluck Jonathan.
In
fact, his opposition to participation in politics ended immediately after the
1999 election, having been appointed as Commissioner in Bayelsa State
Government. Of course, there are activists who from day one did not accept the
decision not to participate. They include the current Minister of Information.
It is contestable whether such activists can at all justify their position with
reference to performance.
Left
ideologue will readily justify the transient nature of our conduct with Karl
Marx's argument in Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte to the effect that
"Men (and certainly women too) make their own history, but they do not
make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but
under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the
past".
Some
of these explanations may only serve to legitimise opportunism and the absence
of humility. It is very clear that some of the time we make wrong judgements.
It could also be sheer recklessness and the arrogance that we know better. In
every respect, it requires deep reflection and soul searching.
Perhaps,
in recognition of this reality, since June 2012, there has been attempts to
stir up debate amongst activists on issues of participation and engagement with
partisan politics. The main issue is the need to engage our political process
especially given the way things have deteriorated in the country. In so many
respect, the considered objective is to facilitate the process of change in the
country. The focus therefore is how the political process can be engaged and
eventually the possible role of activists, especially those that are already in
politics or contemplating going into politics can be promoted.
First,
there is the limit about what possible political change that can be produced
with the present crop of politicians whose main interest is not more than their
personal aspirations for political offices. The second issue was the potential
role of activists in politics. There are many activists who are interested in
transiting to politics but have problems bordering on what party to join.
Related to that are issues of preparing their organisations for leadership
change and generating the necessary funding for partisan political activities.
In
the process of discussing all these, a necessary focus is internal party
dynamics and why often times, good as activists` aspirations might appear to
be, they may not be able to go beyond aspirations to the level of possibly
emerging as candidates. This underscore the point that part of the problem of
politics in Nigeria today is that it is almost on autopilot whereby party
development is given and most activists appear not to be interested in engaging
the parties. The conclusions therefore could be summarised as follows:
Political organising is required to engineer
process of change in the country and direct partisan engagement by activists,
which has an important role in producing the kind of change Nigerians yearn
for; and While it may be necessary for activists to narrow
their engagement and initiative to a particular political party, it is
important that they are also able to develop a strategy that would facilitate
recruitment of patriotic Nigerians to develop necessary interest in partisan
politics.
Specifically,
given current realities there are strong and advantageous reasons in favor of
joining the party to emerge out of the merger of ACN, ANPP, CPC and
Okorocha-led APGA - APC.
However, it needs to be stressed that the dynamics of
electoral politics may push people to enroll in other parties for the purpose
of contesting elections. In other words, the electoral prospects of the party
will be its most important selling point.
Activists
need to engage partisan politics based on clear assessment of entry points and
existing power blocks. Given consideration for bigger parties for example, what
are the entry points for engagement by activists as being envisioned? What are
the leading political players and to what extent can activist engage them?
There is also the question of can we engage in partisan activities covertly i.
e. can activists engage in partisan politics without being exposed? These and
so many other questions need to be answered from the beginning.
Above
all, are activists really organised? Can they to the extent of their
organisation present a cohesive political front? This will entail developing a
clear engagement programme and commencing its implementation based on organic
relationship with existing party structures and some political leaders.
Current
consultations and initiatives around the merger and the prospective All
Progressive Congress (APC) could stimulate a shift from the 1998 activists
non-partisan disposition. The broader challenge is whether it will lead to changing
the orientation of our parties from being election platforms or merely become a
tool for the recruitment of activists into partisan politics and sucking them
into the establishment.
Largely
because our parties are simply election platforms, they don't look for members.
One consideration is that activists need to consider initiating broader
organising strategy before mainstreaming themselves into any particular party.
This could be a strategy that can make political negotiations easier and impactful.
How do we get started?
As
activists therefore seek answers, they need to appreciate the reality that no
matter what anyone will want to claim, Nigerians, no matter their identity or
attribute, are partly guilty of why Nigeria is today what it is and the
challenge is not any lengthy or glamorous analysis of excuses and
self-glorification.
Activists
just need to be very practical politically and less academic. They need a clear
roadmap that should facilitate smooth and successful transition from the current
rot to a fresh new beginning, from authoritarianism to democratic rule, from
culture of impunity breeding corruption, lawlessness, injustice and anarchy to
rule of law and constitutionalism, and from so-called non-partisan activism to
organic activists with strong links and influence with political parties.
The
absence of such transition has stagnated activists individually and
organisationally and even nationally. On account of this stagnation, the
nation's political landscape is today over saturated with all sorts of
primordial anger and hatred.
Activists
with some national conscience, even if residual, need to appreciate the
challenge to act differently so as to begin to foster good solutions to our
national political problems. Doing so would require that activists also focus
attention to themselves and honestly accept the reality that they are largely
conservative, conveniently critical and in a sophisticated way very tolerant of
the status quo. Since 1999, activists have exceptionally deployed their skills
in the so-called services of democracy. Unfortunately, their skills have
inadvertently contributed by commission or omission to entrenching bad
governance.
Can
activists therefore agree to a minimum programme of action between now and
2015? What can activists do to ensure that such a programme of action
contribute to the emergence of new political leadership in the country in 2015?
Is it possible to have a programme of action that is broadly defined in such a
way that it is able to accommodate all interests?
One
of the big challenge of engaging partisan politics is big time funding.
Activists tend to be very idealistic and puritanical about this which partly
accounts for their stagnation. The reality requires that activists truly open
up and institute a good strategy for fundraising. The truth is that success in
politics is highly correlated with capacity to raise funds. Some of the
activists that may have on second thoughts went into politics based on these
puritanical beliefs may have tested the bitter test of being defeated by
predictable factors.
One
of the things that need to be urgently addressed is that engagement with
partisan politics must go beyond conferencing, workshops and reflections, which
often in all cases end up only restating individual positions and why it is
almost impossible for activists to adopt a common position. Given that the goal
of virtually all activists is to influence public policies, the context of a
democratic system of government, require that public policies should have their
foundations in political party programmes.
Unfortunately,
the Nigerian experience, at least since 1999, represent an aberration which
reduced political parties to merely election platforms. Individuals only join
political parties for the purpose of contesting elections and citizens only
relate with political parties with reference to candidates of the parties.
Reference to principles, manifestos or programmes are simply absent.
This
has enthroned the unfortunate reality whereby, the difference between PDP and
ACN, CPC, Labour Party, APGA, and by deduction APC is only in the name and the
faces that represent the leadership of these parties. Partly on account of
this, switching membership and with it also emerging as party candidate of all the
parties is as easy as entering a mosque or church. No scrutiny is required and
with the absence of party principle, manifesto or programme, all that any
citizen require is capacity to mobilise funding.
And
since government positions are always "lucrative", individuals will
always aspire to occupy those offices and therefore there is no need for
parties to look for members. Candidates will look for the party and it will be
the responsibility of such candidates to bring in members into the party. This
way, candidates bring in members into parties and in the same way take them
away once they didn't get what they want.
With
all the claimed commitments of activists to superior democratic values,
activists who decide to join partisan politics, hardly conduct themselves
differently. The consequence is that activists who succeeded in winning
elections become vulnerable and often get compromised. In other words, although
they won elections, they were not able to make the difference. There are of
course incidences where activists who get into government at different levels
fail to connect with even simple policy advocacy work of civil society groups.
Certainly, there are contextual issues which would have accounted for that.
Without
any attempt to reduce the discussion to reviewing the roles of individuals, we
need to ask the questions, how can activists engage partisan politics in
Nigeria in such a way that their engagement challenge the parties to define
their orientations with respect to commitments to social welfare programmes
such as education, health, water, etc.?
Beyond
paper commitments, can partisan engagement by activists facilitate the
emergence of frameworks within political parties such that party office-bearers
at all levels are compelled and empowered to deliver on these commitments? Is
it possible to construct broad engagement scenarios that could cover the
fundamental challenge of recruiting party membership and organise and
facilitate training programmes for party membership covering issues of managing
party administration, recruiting political candidates among party members,
fundraising for party and political campaigns, constitutional responsibilities
of arms of government, etc?
Based
on realities facing us today, across all the parties, what are the entry points
for partisan engagements by activists? How can activists institute a
coordinated orientation for partisan engagement without compromising the
independence and above all non-partisan identity of the individual
organisations that activists belong? Apart from contesting for political
positions in government, what other roles can activists play? How can activists
orient themselves to be able to play all the roles?
These
are questions that can guide us to focus the debate so that we are able to in
particular accelerate the transition from so-called non-partisan activism to
organic activists with strong links and influence with political parties.
Activists owe this much to the country in order to justify any claim to being
committed to the emergence of responsible governance in Nigeria in 2015.
Activists need to recognise that Nigeria is today in series crisis largely
because of the absence strong countervailing political force to contest the
hegemony of today's politicians. This is the result of the inability of
activists as a group that led the struggle for the enthronement of democracy in
1999 but failed to provide a coordinated framework for participation and
engagement with partisan politics.
The
absence of participation and engagement of activists in our national politics
has also weakened/discouraged engagement and participation by professional,
women, youth and other organised groups. The only exception is labour which
formed Labour Party after truncating the participatory and all-inclusive
framework of 2001/2002 under the network of civil society groups.
The narrative
about the labour experience is a matter that must be studied and responded to
in order to avoid its manifestation in different form. In fact, the experince
of January 2012 anti-fuel subsidy protest is another variant of this
manifestation. One of the clear conscious political decisions of Nigerian trade
unions led by the NLC under the current democratic dispensation is that its
political strategy revolves around the aspirations of one person.
The
point therefore is that activists can contribute significant in shaping the way
to a brighter and prosperous political future for the country by broadening the
frontiers of engagement beyond any single personality. One issue that will be
of interest to everyone is the capacity to develop a mass political front. What
should spur actions should be the acknowledgement that realities facing Nigeria
are disturbing and need collective action.
As
a nation, we really don't have certain luxuries. All analyses must have good
measure of practical actions that would enable us to bring about political
change in the country, or at the minimum stimulating motion towards the
creation of a new political reality. Activist in politics could have since
learned that our people have serious contempt for knowledge and therefore if
truly we want to bring about political change we must have a good response and
not just capacity to engage in analysis and express opposition to the current
status quo.
One
thing is very clear, activists shouldn`t go into politics divided. Two, they
shouldn`t go into politics with arrogance. Three, they can't win election
without being able to enjoy mass support. Therefore, should they continue
spending valuable time debating whether the issue before them is to go into
politics? While we are spending precious time wondering what to do, those
already in politics are busy amassing looted money for 2015 elections.
Yet, our
activists are dissipating so much energy to even agree whether they should go
into politics. Perhaps, God has created Nigerian activist with the purpose of
only organising protests, strikes and campaigns against people in politics and
government.
It
is quite traumatic that here we are as a country without a functional
educational and healthcare system. The generation of the current rulers of
Nigeria, including most of our activists, live in the illusion that the best
response to the governance crisis in Nigeria is to send their children abroad
for education.
And when they and their loved ones are sick, they go for medical
treatment outside this country, often at public expense overtly or covertly.
Are these really our best responses? The answer should be emphatic no! Our best
response is to go into politics and aspire to take positions directly in
government and do the right thing. It should not be about one person taking
that decision.
The
sad thing is that activists invest more energy fighting themselves rather than
the political 'enemy'. As a result, they (activists) have more capacity to
disorganise themselves and by default strengthen the politicians they seek to
defeat. This is really very sad. This was the story of Campaign for Democracy
and most political initiatives by Nigerian progressives.
Is it that activists
are more comfortable being called upon to serve as appointees of elected
people? Why are they (activists) so contemptuous of each other? As one reflect
on our experience in politics and the challenges facing our country, one cannot
but express some reservations about the readiness of activists to sincerely
fight for democracy and national development.
It
is true that ACTIVISTS CAN'T AVOID DISAGREEMENT BUT THEY MUST REMAIN UNITED IF
THEY ARE TO BE RELEVANT POLITICALLY! The strength of activists should be their
organisation, numbers and above all skills and commitment to make sacrifices
and be selfless.
This is necessary because politics is a terrain of struggle.
As much as it is about access to public offices, it is also about interest
articulation and aggregation. In the context of contemporary Nigerian politics,
there is always the temptation to reduce it to good relationship with powerful
political actors and who would then guarantee the access.
This
has made many people to pay more attention to developing relationships with
powerful political actors without defining clearly what they want to use the
offices being aspired for. In the circumstances, many people become successful
without making any difference. Few are able to distinguish themselves from the
crowd of motley politicians.
Obviously
this pattern is also true for activists who have gone into politics. Like all
other Nigerian politicians, the first thing that attracted activists to
politics is individual ambitions to contest elections. The timing therefore
coincides with election periods and the reason for joining a party was to
emerge as candidates for specific offices.
Choice of the party to join is most
of the time informed by individual assessment of prospects. Often times,
prospect is narrowly defined in terms of being able to emerge as candidate of
the ruling party. It is a dominant belief that once emerged as candidates of
the ruling party, it is as good as wining the elections, partly because the
party machinery will rig candidates to victory.
As
activists who are passionate about social justice, is this the best strategy?
Is this not a case of just following the bandwagon? Why can't activists design
a new political path, a path that can enable them emerge as candidates at the
same time ensure that they are different? These are questions activists must
convincingly and practically answer.
Sometimes,
activists are too quick to advertise themselves without objectively being able
to appreciate true reality. They get blinded by claimed celebration of purist
credentials, which in reality is as dirty, if not dirtier than the image of
contemporary Nigerian politician.
A good illustration is the reality of their
organizational life in the Nigerian civil society sector today. Financial and personnel
management is as bad as any typical Nigerian public organization. Transparency
and accountability are at best concepts in relations to public policy advocacy.
Personnel management conforms to Obasanjo’s logic of 100% loyalty, or IBB’s
strategy of non-tolerance to criticism based on inducements. Yet, we are the
champions of the struggle for human rights, justice and the rule of law.
How
can activists lay the foundation for selfless politics? How can they organize
and develop superior moral authority for politics? If they (activists) are
serious about partisan engagement that will challenge current politics, these
are questions that must be answered. It is the nature of answers to these
questions that will define the orientation of the struggle led by any political
party. Irrespective of partisan affiliation therefore activists should be ready
to engage in struggles on daily basis so that they are able to win concessions
regarding party decisions.
It
should not be about broad categorisation around internal democracy, but more
about specific demands. It is the capacity of activists to win followership
within the party that will determine whether they can influence party choices
and decisions, including leadership and candidates' selections. There are
interesting experiences even in the current context to inspire activists.
One
thing that all our analysis must recognize for it to be practically relevant to
Nigerian politics is that circumstances differ across the country. What exists
in Kaduna State is completely different from what exist in states in the South
West or South South or even North Central. On account of those differences, the
factors that for instance make activists to succeed in one state may even be
the factors that would have undermined the electoral prospects of another in a
different State for instance.
Even
within states, there are different political factors at play. In all states,
there are different political cultures and behavior across towns and local
governments. Activists must be capable of understanding these factors and
engaging the political space in a manner that enable them to be influential.
This
leads to the critical point about the fact that if activists are serious they
must develop a relationship with our communities, and politically, our
community would be our wards. For the relationship to be meaningful and have
some electoral prospects, it must balance effectively capacity to respond to
monetary demands and being able to regulate the conduct of local politicians.
Often,
because we don’t have relationship with our wards, our entry point to politics
has to be through politicians who already have relationship with our wards who
would then introduce us to the wards. Since the timing for joining politics
always coincide with election period and the purpose of joining is to enable us
contest elections, the method becomes transactional. Can activists have a
different approach, one that is not based on the transactional method?
Do
they have the commitment to be able to make the necessary sacrifices to develop
a non-transactional political relationship with our wards and local
politicians? These are questions that are easier asked than answered.
Sometimes, it is far more convenient to follow the bandwagon around adopting a
godfather or godmother who can then take over the financial burden.
There
is no easy answer and there is certainly no political group at the moment with
a clear national strategy on these issues. Nigerian activists need to open
debate on these matters so that they are able to clarify and be in a position
to develop a clear roadmap. Although remote, how activists are able to respond
to this challenge based on a practical strategy that is not doctrinaire,
simplistically ideological and narrowly academic, is fundamental requirement
for the development of capacity to bring about change in Nigeria.
It
would appear that activists are only at their best when there is a big
challenge. Small or remote challenges hardly elicit attention. In political
terms therefore, activists may be very comfortable to reduce issues of
participation in politics to excellent commentaries, criticisms and election
monitoring or setting up election situation rooms. In terms of engagements with
political parties, there may be weak or individual initiative. Does this mean
that as activists, we are not interested in politics? Are we not interested in
who emerged as candidates and eventually who become elected, rigged or not?
One
thing is very clear, to the extent that one of the major plank of work of
activists is policy advocacy and engagement, they are certainly interested in
politics. The interest in election monitoring is a confirmation of activists’
interest in who rules this country. However, these are very weak strategies.
They do not even guarantee activists any political minimum such as capacity to
influence national budget, sponsor a bill in the National Assembly, influence
approaches to policy implementation by the Executive, etc.
Looking
at these parameters, it is very interesting that since 1999, the scorecard of
activists with respect to engagement with National Assembly, excellent as it
would appear, is largely reactive and hardly include sponsoring bills.
Activists are most active in fact when there are bills to be shot down. That is
when we now look for allies in the National Assembly and when we encounter
smart lawmakers whose interest is not more than good media reports, activists
get easily contented, only to be scandalized by the corrupt conducts of such
lawmakers later.
Of
course, there are times activists are lucky to have their own in the National
Assembly. The best period was 2003 - 2007, when there were activists like Dr.
Usman Bugaje, Hon. Uche Onyeagucha, Dr. Haruna Yerima, Prof. Sola Adeyeye, etc.
In fact, it was the presence of some of these activists in the chambers of the
National Assembly that made the struggle against Obasanjo's Third Term
effective.
Even
then, there was also very interesting experiences with some of our activists.
The point is, activists need to review of their political engagement
strategies. Today, we have very few activists in the National Assembly.
Unfortunately, like our political parties, these activists have no structured
relationship with organised groups in the country. Relations are remote and we
are hardly thinking in terms of setting agenda for our activists.
Is
it how activists can bring about political change? Certainly not. Political
inaction can only be explained with reference to conservative behavior that may
have dominated the conduct of Nigerian activists. This is because, clearly,
activists are not able to lead the process of change since they cannot take the
necessary personal risks. Activists cannot risk jeopardizing funding sources on
account of aspiring for politics and may not risk leaving their small
organisations for politics.
On
account of this, activists and their organisations have stagnated. Just look at
a typical civil society organisation and its leadership. You are likely to find
that the set of leadership is largely the same since 1999, the source of
funding and perhaps quantity, almost the same since 1999. As a result, vertical
mobility within the organisation is frozen and many middle level cadres and
officials are frustrated, which breeds crisis resulting in most breakaways and
the new organisations that emerged between 1999 and today.
Just
check, almost all new organisations formed since 1999 were on account of this
reality. Perhaps, the only exception are the international NGOs that gives
tenured contracts of 2 - 4 years. Interestingly, activists always present
themselves as progressives. Clearly, they are only progressives to the extent
that they are able to criticise governments.
There
is the side of activists that project the hypocritical attitude of criticizing
government on the one hand and on the other hand serving the same governments
in different capacities, including serving as consultants. This has created the
terrible impression that activists are critics because they are out of government
and once they get opportunity to be part of government their criticism will
give way.
Unfortunately, because of the conduct of later day activists who were
once in government at different levels and who while in government expressed
strong resentments against activists and their policy demands, the view that
activists criticise because they are outside government is gaining stronger
currency.
We
just need to practically deal with political realities confronting us. Imagine
that activists have resolved to decisively intervene politically by engaging
political parties such that our engagement is to lead to negotiation to throw
up at least 20 - 30 activists as candidates for elections at different levels.
Naturally, for activists to be taken seriously, they have to present their best
who are leaders of organisations today and to that extent therefore disengaging
these leaders from current responsibilities. This is necessary because politics
has to be full time for one to be able to command the influence necessary, at
party and community levels, to emerge as candidate and win election.
This
will practically mean, creating 20 new vacancies in civil society
organisations. A big challenge is that this will need to be managed because
almost all our civil society organisations are molded in the image of the
individual leaders that need to be promoted.
Funders confidence on these
organisations is around these individual leaders and therefore withdrawing them
will lead to complete erosion of the funders confidence. This is a matter that
must be addressed.
The
point is, if we are serious about political change in this country, it is not
enough to criticise or theorise. These are issues we must urgently address. How
can activists start organised engagement with partisan politics? What will be
the driving interest of activists in partisan politics?
These are some of the
questions that need to be answered for engagement with partisan politics by
activists to stimulate interest even among themselves. Ordinarily, we can say
that these are questions to be answered by the activists themselves. It is
however important that Nigerians acknowledge the fact that activists can simply
ignore or fail to answer these questions. In which case, we would just continue
to live with the scandalous limitations of activists.
Besides,
discussions of engagement and interest in politics will largely be academic
exercise. Who among activists is involved is a function of personal interest.
How interest is stimulated is a function of other variables, which is beyond
public debate.
At best, public debate may assist in catalysing interests.
Therefore argument about partisan political engagement should mean clearly
defining an agreeable goal for the engagement, setup structures that will drive
the process of achieving goal and estimate resources needed for the engagement
to take place and commence mobilisation.
In
terms of agreeable goal for engagement, it is important that activists define a
goal that is not coloured by just our ideological inclinations but one that
take into account the challenge that politics is not just about what we want.
It is also about giving people what they want. Often times, this is the source
of activists failings largely because while they are very aggressive in
demanding what they want, they are stingy in giving others what they want.
Part
of the reasons for activists stinginess in giving other people what they want
is simply because there is always a conflict between what activists want and
what other people want. It is easy to justify the conflict in the fact that
what other people are demanding is inimical and represent some danger which
must be eliminate in the interest of our national politics or so-called
collective good.
Most
of the times, once activists are confronted with these realities they go back
to their purist shell as they did in 1999 and in the circumstances, they give
others, especially the politicians that are today's rulers what they want. The
hard truth is that activists are very deficient in working out a national
political strategy of how they can get what they want.
Activists
hardly work hard to develop their political negotiation skills and go an extra
mile to negotiate what they want and achieve results at national levels. They always
adopt a very simplistic individual or micro organisational approach and the
reality is that politics is complex and partisan politics is as sophisticated
and demanding as preparing to go to heaven.
Before
activists are able to set any goal therefore they must come to terms with this
reality. Engaging partisan politics means relating with current political party
leaders. In the context of PDP, it means relating with Alh. Bamanga Tukur, Dr.
Goodluck Jonathan, Arc. Namadi Sambo, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, Chief Tony Anenih
and down the lines in states, you will have party chairmen, state governors and
other stakeholders. With respect to ACN, activists must be ready to relate with
Chief Bisi Akande, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Chief Audu Ogbeh, six state governors
and other party leaders.
CPC
has Chief Tony Momoh, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, Engr. Buba Galadima, Alh. Sule
Hamman, Nasarawa State governor and others. This will be the case with ANPP,
Labour Party, APGA and all the other parties. Of course, in the context of the
merger negotiation and our prospective APC, it means relating with ACN, ANPP,
CPC, Okrocha-led APGA and Chief Tom Ikimi led merger committee.
Assessment
of party governance and individual conducts of these leaders may only produce
the disappointing outcome of non engagement. One option for activists will be
to proceed and create their own political brand. Even that, they have proven to
be very bad political organizers. If anyone doubts this judgement, check the
experience of Campaign for Democracy, Democratic Alternative, National
Conscience Party and of course Labour Party.
In
all cases, the experience is that activists were unable to move from the realm
of conceptualization to the practical field of politics. Once activists come
close to the practical field of politics, they shiver and allow themselves to
be pushed back to activism and at best return to social criticism. When they
manage to get into practical field, they hardly are able to do so with the
necessary momentum and consistency to be able to win elections.
Therefore,
learning from the experience of activists and in the context of challenges
facing the country today, a realistic goal for activists' engagement with
partisan politics will be to establish a framework for activists to transit to
politics and win elections. And given the very urgent and critical conditions
facing the country activists don't have some comfort of exploring whether they
can correct limitations identified with CD, DA, NCP experiences. The critical
challenge facing us is that activists just have to do something towards 2015.
Invariably, this will mean working with current parties - PDP, ACN, CPC, ANPP,
Labour Party, APGA, etc.
This
being the case, activists need to ask the question, what are the prospects in
each of these parties and how can activists initiate process of not just
expansion of democratic space but more importantly the emergence of democratic
leaders in the country? Prospects in terms of getting activists to emerge as
candidates within the party may be important but should not be end in
themselves. Here assessment of local political dynamics is also important.
While
it can be very easy to emerge as candidate of any of the smaller parties, in
terms of capacity to mobilize resources needed to win elections, activists must
explore opportunities in the bigger parties.
This
is one reason why activists cannot afford to adopt a blanket strategy of
arguing that they should work with only one party. While working with only one
party will be ideal, it will not be a successful venture across the nation in
terms of winning elections, except if the party is one that accommodates all
the different shades of political divides in the country. To some extent, at
the moment, only PDP meets this qualification.
Unfortunately,
PDP is the government party. Whoever is in government will emerge as candidate
of PDP. If the objective of activists is to bring about change in government
therefore, PDP cannot be the consideration. The party that may meet this
specification, once the current merger is successfully is APC. Even then, it
will not be automatic. Activists need to engagement the merger negotiation
process to make that possible.
At
this stage of the merger negotiations to produce APC, the structures for
engagement that activists should aspire to have should be ones that would
commit the party to some minimum. These minimum should include having clear
structures within the party that relate to broad interest groups such as civil
society, trade unions, youth, women, professional groups, persons with
disability, diaspora, etc. on the one hand and people-oriented policy
directions on the other.
These
are factors that would distinguish our new party, APC, from PDP and all the
parties created in its image. These are also the factors that would guarantee
that public officials in governments produced by APC would practice as well as
defend democracy. To that extent, a government produced by APC will necessarily
consult Nigerians on every policy initiative.
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