2015: After Opposition Merger, What Next?

At last, after months

of intense negotiations, four opposition political parties last Wednesday resolved to float a new political party. They called it “All Progressive Congress” (APC). It is on this platform they hope to pursue their avowed determination to wrest power from the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2015 general election.

The four parties that make up APC are the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA).

A statement read by Chief Tom Ikimi of the ACN to newsmen after the merger said “At no time in our (Nigeria’s) national life has radical change become more urgent. And to meet the challenge of that change, we the following progressive political parties namely ACN, ANPP, APGA and CPC have resolved to merge forthwith and become All Progressives Congress, APC, and offer to our beleaguered people a recipe for peace and prosperity.

“We resolve to form a political party committed to the principles of internal democracy focused on serious issues of concern to our people, determined to bring corruption and insecurity to an end, determined to grow our economy and create jobs in their millions through education, housing, agriculture, industrial growth and stop the increasing despair and hopelessness among our people”.

On Tuesday, preceding Wednesday’s declaration of the merger, ten opposition Governors were hosted by Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fasola. It was a meeting in which all the t’s and i’s of the merger were crossed and dotted.

After the meeting, while responding to a question on whether the merger talk is about unseating the PDP, the Governor of Zamfara State, Alhaji Abdulazziz Abubakar Yari said it is about how to “fix Nigeria in the right perspectives”.

According to him, it is a question of asking if the people have been happy since 1999 till date when the PDP has been in power. “If the contrary has been the case then the leaders are duty bound to drive the people aright.

“We believe that the PDP has not done enough.  We have the idea, the knowledge and the progressive intention to move the country forward. So, if you say that we are going to move PDP out of power, yes we are ready to do that, God willing”, Governor Yari said.

Expectedly, this merger did not come on a platter of gold; it had gone through lots of criticisms and counter criticisms, accusations and counter accusations, particularly, given the benefit of hindsight of previous mergers.

It had, in fact, as in the case of iron, gone through the raging furnace, which must have made it real, feasible and achievable, at least from the perspective of the pioneers.

From all indications, the opposition seems to have been guided by the words of the great inspirational writer, Napoleon Hill, when the said “You are the master of your destiny. You can influence, direct and control your own environment. You can make your life what you want it to be”.

This feeling was perhaps also re-enforced by one of the great speeches of former United States President, Abraham Lincoln, who noted that “The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just”.

The opposition has so far justified its quest for power with one key promise: to wrest power from the PDP for the interest of the country, a phrase that has become sine qua non with every aspirant to the Presidency.

Now that the merger has come to fruition, supported by the Independent Electoral Commission, what is the next step? What is the new thing the opposition has that the rest of the country has not seen or heard? What are those things they have to offer that would, with reasonable effort, better the life of the common man?

Most of all, how do they hope to change Nigeria to the point that every law abiding citizen will have his/her due in whatever way you look at it, different from the now hackneyed “when we come on board”, which now means “when it is my turn to take my share”. This is the crux of the matter.

The questions that readily come to mind are “how have these opposition parties fared in their states”? Can they genuinely say they had fared better than the party they oppose?

The challenge is also on the ruling PDP. In the words of party’s national chairman, Dr. Bamanga Tukur, “the idea of a strong opposition party is a welcome idea to PDP as it would serve as a call to action”. The question is, to what positive extent can this be true?

The reality is that promises of such Eldorado are obviously not new to keen observers of what could easily be described as the Nigerian melodrama, in which key actors in governance are guided more by selfish than common interest in most of their decisions. The result of which is why the country’s development had been somewhat of a highly boring merry-go-round.

The reason for this situation may not be far from the possibility that those who aspire to rule are guided more by what Martin Luther King Jr  meant when he said “There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but because conscience tells him it is right”. They seem to apply this principle without adapting it to the Nigerian stage.

Aspirants do not also seem it necessary to reason like Cyrus the Great, who said “All men have their frailties; and whoever looks for a friend without imperfections, will never find what he seeks”.

Above all, what can we, both individually and as a country, achieve if we do not imbibe the words of the great mahatma Ghandi, who expressed the belief that “Where there is love, there is life”.

It, therefore, may not really make any difference whether the opposition wins the presidency or not in 2015 if they cannot make similar difference where they currently find themselves.