Forgive not the APC, pardon not the opposition

By Owei Lakemfa

The bazaar  of  partisan politics is in open swing. The ruling All Progressives Congress, APC,  which has been attracting opposition politicians to itself like magnet, held its National Summit  on May 22, 2025 inside the Aso Rock Presidential Palace.

The venue is symbolic of the President’s powers and could not  be a conducive atmosphere for free debates that should attend a political party summit.

The main resolution, which was doubtlessly why the summit held,      is the APC declaring “President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the Sole Presidential Candidate of the APC.” The haste to consecrate the President is  indecent and an assault to  probity and democracy.

First, the President had not even gotten half way to  his  four-year tenure. Short of clairvoyance, how did the party assess the Tinubu  administration’s future performance? I know in the past, pools betting was popular in Nigeria; so, is the APC returning the country    to some gambling tradition?

Secondly, the party by its decision, closed the door to all other possible contestants. What type of democracy is that? Thirdly, what is the message? That Tinubu is the alpha and omega of the APC and is therefore not only infallible, but also unchallengeable?

As I scanned the summit, the participants appeared more like shareholders of  a privately quoted company waiting for company souvenirs like umbrellas, tea mugs and brooms to be shared before breaking for a promised lunch.

But let me be fair to the APC as it has displayed far more gumption than its great Chairman Abdulahi Ganduje who, with a  mischievous smile playing around his lips, had    declared ahead of the summit that there is no vacancy in Aso Rock come    2027 when the country goes for  constitutional general elections.

In a sane  polity, such treasonable utterance should have resulted in    Ganduje resigning  and being hurled before the courts.  But not in Nigeria where bottles of champaign might have been popped open to celebrate  such inanity.

By the way, did the APC pay for the use of the Presidential Palace? If it did, can the Presidency please show Nigerians the receipt? If it did not, then for a  level playing  field, the place should be left open for other political parties that want to follow the APC footsteps in holding their party summits.

Also, another thought crept  into my mind. When the APC endorsed Tinubu as its 2027 presidential candidate, I didn’t hear it mentioned that  Vice President Kashim Shetima  is also getting an automatic ticket. Perhaps the consecrated Tinubu would have the freedom to appoint his running mate.

Doubtlessly, we are not in  a healthy democratic state.  But the solution does not lie in any of the main political parties.   They all are complicit in the sorry state we find ourselves. They are all represented in the   National Assembly where it is ‘yes’ to  the President’s  desires.

Although we can reach a consensus that the vegetative eight years of President Muhammadu Buhari were an unmitigated disaster   compounded by the   poverty-inducing policies of the Tinubu administration, we must not forget that the foundations of our socio-economic crises and state of insecurity were partly laid by the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.   The bulk of the opposition politicians today were or are in the PDP.

The fact is that the biggest and best investment in Nigeria is government. So, most politicians outside government are like orphans. Therefore, they  are fighting  tenaciously to unseat the Tinubu administration. For this, they are employing  all sorts of subterfuge, including injecting vegetative political parties with steroids to revive them for coalition politics.

A few weeks ago, self-acclaimed opposition   politicians met and one of   their main spokesperson   was Senator Ishaku Elisha   Abbo who had been shown the way out of the Senate in disgraceful circumstances. It was the usual verbiage: Tinubu is running a “government by exclusion and economic insensitivity”, and, of course, the ethnic card: that he is “neglecting the North”.

Then, there is the other major opposition party, the Labour Party, LP. The party  is of good parentage. I know this because I was one of its midwives. But unfortunately, it has always been used and dumped, UAD. In the past 20 years, the LP has been the refuge of politicians who could not secure the ticket of their parent, or preferred parties. Admittedly this has not been for free.

Today, the LP has three persons claiming to be legally married to it.   Doubtlessly, the strongest is His Excellency Peter Obi who rode it through the 2023 presidential election. He has not expressed any long term interest in it as he is busy registering his Obedient members which would serve him in good stead in case he needs to move out or consolidate his grip.

Whatever the case, the  likeable Obi’s primary ambition is to be a presidential candidate in the  2027 presidential election. It is a personal ambition. He personally explained this  in an address to his young supporters in the last week of May, 2025. He said: “I believe we should have a retirement age for politicians. By 2027, I will be 65. If the presidency goes back to the North in 2031, it may not return to the South until 2039 — by then, I will be 77. I wouldn’t want to run for office at that age. It would make a mess of everything.” So, for him to realise his ambition to be President of Nigeria, he must be a candidate, and win.

The ideology,   principles and policies of His Excellency are not different either from that of President Tinubu nor the PDP from which he had broken to pick the LP ticket. The only thing he offers that is different from other  politicians is style and a verbal promise to be prudent in the use of resources.

As Nigerians, we have no business fighting ourselves over which of the mainstream politicians should lord it over us in 2027. It is not our duty to carry out propaganda on their behalf or chorus their singsong. We should learn from the history of slavery, especially in the Americas; that it   is unwise to debate which slave master is better or treats his slaves better. We should simply work to throw away our shackles and embrace freedom.

Even if it is not possible for us to build a peoples’ party that can change the course of our history in 2027; we should at least be able to build a consensus on our irreducible minimum demands of any party or anybody that wants to rule.

It is clear that what we had on October 1,1960, when the British colonialists symbolically  left, was some political independence.

We need another independence movement. If you agree, please contact me.