Since Wednesday, May 2, I have been working on this piece as part of my continuation towards the unity of opposition politics in Nigeria. I concluded it Thursday night around 11.30 am (May 3) and went to bed with the hope that in the morning of Friday, May 4, I can tidy the editorial bit. Only to wake up in the morning with the tragic news of the assassination of Comrade Olaitan Oyerinde, Principal Private Secretary to Comrade Adams Oshiomhole. Comrade Olaitain has been a political associate since 1987. He was part of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) leadership of 1988/89. Although elected as an Ex-Officio Member, he was by far one of the most resourceful Comrades. In fact, out of a team comprising more than 20 officials, he was one of the only four officials (Gbenga Olawepo, Gbenga Komolafe, Olaitan and myself) that remained and successfully handed the leadership to Hon. Bamidele Opeyemi team in January 1990. Subsequently, I had the privilege of working with Comrade Olaitan in NLC from 2000 to 2006. The death of Olaitan is a tragic loss to the Labour Movement and Nigeria as a whole. He has left us with the burden of moving Nigeria forward. We all need to remain resolute and take all the necessary steps needed to defeat PDP in the 2015 elections. I am therefore dedicating this piece to Comrade Olaitan and the values of a free, just and egalitarian society for which he lived and struggled for throughout his short life! May God Almighty grant his family the fortitude to bear this heavy loss. Amin!
SMLukman
Manifesto of Opposition Politics in Nigeria:
The New Leadership Challenge
By: Salihu Moh. Lukman
One of the manifestations of stagnation in Nigerian politics has been the inability to produce new leadership. Leadership simply means providing direction administratively and managerially, thereby exercising authority, influence and command. In the context of Nigerian politics, since 1999, the persons that have provided direction administratively and managerially, whether at governmental levels or political party level are virtually the same. They are the same to the extent that they are constant denominators in Nigerian politics.
These personalities include party leaders and public officers, among whom are former Presidents and Heads of State, former Vice Presidents, former and serving governors, ministers, special advisers and assistants, former presidential and gubernatorial candidates, etc. They oscillate between government service and party positions. Whether with respect to PDP or our opposition parties, it is a long list of omnipresent personalities since 1999. Partly because of their ubiquity, our electoral cycles and their outcomes are predictable. In other words, candidates at all levels are known; their popularity and therefore capacity to win or lose elections are almost determined.
This considerably accounts for why our politics presents very limited options. An evidence for this is the fact that we have personalities that are perpetually aspiring for specific positions. Many of them hardly rise beyond aspirations. Few are able to emerge as candidates. The main qualification of most aspirants and candidates has always been capacity to accumulate or mobilise campaign funds. Most of these people have very weak record of community service. Success or failure in elections, either at the level of political party or at wider electoral contest is hardly a reflection of merit.
One aberration this has produced is the fact that today, Nigerians equate leadership with public office. The only exception is individual capacity to accumulate money. Access to money can qualify a person to aspire for leadership even if that person does not have the experience of holding public office.
In contemporary Nigeria, you are only considered qualified to contest for leadership of government if you are once a public officer. For instance, you are only qualified to contest for governorship if you are once a commissioner, minister, speaker of the House of Assembly, member of House of Representatives, Senator, etc. At the level of president, you are only qualified if you were once a governor, Head of State, Senate President, possibly Speaker of the House of Representatives, etc. As a result, all our political parties shop for their candidates from the same pool of personalities – most of them very corrupt, ineffective and incompetent. Since our focus is opposition politics, what does this specifically mean? It simply means that our opposition parties lack a distinctive constituency. They have the same constituency as the ruling PDP.
Looking at the origin of Nigerian opposition parties - ANPP, ACN, CPC, Labour Party, APGA and PPA – it is without any doubt that they are virtually the same as the PDP in terms of orientation of their membership. The only difference is in the personalities and to a large extent, the fact that their membership is concentrated in particular geographical locations. Not even the labour party is able to organise a distinct membership base.
To be fair to the CPC is to acknowledge that its popularity is on account of its vast followership from the ranks of ordinary Nigerians mainly labourers, artisans, if you like, the blue collar category. They are however not properly organised into the structures of the party. These are pools of volunteers that the party has no records of. In the case of the ACN, there are few professionals that are members in their individual capacities. This has not therefore translated into an organic linkage between the parties and organised professional groups.
The inability of our opposition parties to organise a distinct membership base is partly the source of our national leadership limitations. This fundamentally, is the reason why individual aspirations will continue to dominate our politics and control our political parties. Individual aspirations will continue to be the source of party funding.
What are the options? Given our reality today, whereby no one party in the opposition can defeat the PDP, the most important factor in the negotiation process, especially negotiations between the ACN and CPC, would be to develop a framework for mobilisation targeting mass organisations in the country. The focus therefore should be: how do we translate the popularity of the CPC among ordinary Nigerians into membership of the party? How do we translate membership of professional cadres in the ACN into a working partnership with professional groups?
For opposition parties to galvanise the polity, they need to develop a partnership framework with organisations such as Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Trade Union Congress (TUC), civil society groups, professional organisations, etc. Such partnership would commit the organisations into undertaking some responsibilities towards membership mobilisation, fundraising for campaigns, political education around party programmes, etc. In turn, the parties will be committed to adopting some favourable frameworks that would give advantages to these constituencies during process of candidates’ selections and implementation of some policies favourable to these constituencies. This may include allocating some votes to these constituencies.
It is this kind of arrangement that accounts for why the British Labour Party is identified with the Trade Union Congress of UK. Similarly, the Democratic Party of the US is identified with the American trade unions organised under the AFL-CIO. Near home on the African continent, it also account for the strength of the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa based on its partnership with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).
What are the chances that ACN or CPC for instance can contract an agreement with the NLC, TUC, civil society groups or any other professional group? Given that the Labour Party was the initiative of the NLC, wouldn’t it be better to attempt to contract an alliance with the NLC through the Labour Party? There is also the question bordering on the assumed neutrality of these organisations. Wouldn’t partnership with a political party compromise these organisations and eventually incapacitate them from discharging their functions as non-partisan, non-governmental and not-for-profit?
Discussions of possible compromises should take into account the cost of passivity. As a nation, we are today in this unfortunate political jungle because of the passivity and docility of credible Nigerians to participate. Therefore, debate about compromises would appear to be a luxury, given the multifarious nature of crises facing Nigeria today. A major challenge before all Nigerians is to provide viable options that would stimulate citizens’ participation in partisan politics.
To provide viable options is to propose new scenarios and test their workability. In the specific case of NLC and TUC, given the poor relationship between the NLC and TUC leadership, on the one hand and the leadership of the Labour Party, on the other, a test could go both ways. With the central position of Comrade Adams Oshiomhole in the ACN, there is a big window of possibility that informal consultations with the NLC, TUC and Labour Party could be explored. This must take into account dynamics within the NLC and TUC, given that by 2015, some of the current leaders of these organisations would be completing their terms.
In fact, the absence of progressive exit routes for leaders of most non-governmental organisations in the country has been a source of internal organisational tension and crisis. Can our opposition parties begin to develop schema that would facilitate the emergence of new candidates at all levels, thereby providing progressive exit routes for leaders of non-governmental organisations? This will strengthen the leadership structures of organisations through appropriate linkages with the national leadership structures. It will also enhance vertical mobility and healthy succession culture. The absence of vertical mobility in our non-governmental organisations further entrenches stagnation and the dominance of personal aspirations.
Specific agreements with NLC and TUC will enable our opposition parties to overcome the narrow mindset of the leadership of Labour Party, which may not go beyond short term financial advantages. Almost the same situation applies to many of our civil society and professional groups. The challenge is how these groups will develop demands that would strengthen their influence in the governance processes in Nigeria.
Therefore, if our opposition parties are interested in going beyond opposition i.e. defeating the PDP in 2015, they need to start exploring partnership negotiations with interest groups in the country. It is only when they are able to do that they can discharge their functions of articulating and aggregating interests other than those of the PDP. They can thus be in a position to provide viable political options for Nigerians.
Given that a major challenge facing opposition parties in Nigeria is the issue of producing a popular and credible presidential candidate, how should the opposition parties handle this task in the context of the need to provide alternatives? And in the context of the imperative of ACN and CPC providing leadership that preclude Asiwaju Tinubu and Gen. Buhari, can this be guaranteed?
A leadership scholar, Rowan Gibson, argues: “winners will be those who stay ahead of the change curve, constantly redefining their industries, creating new markets, blazing new trails, reinventing the competitive rules, challenging status quo.” In the case of nations, another leadership scholar, Warren Bennis, identifies the need to produce ‘leaders of leaders’ who “will decentralise power and democratise strategy by involving a rich mixture of different people from inside and outside the organisation in the process of inventing the future.”
If our opposition parties, led by ACN and CPC, are to contract agreements based on national interests and patriotism, they will be contributing towards providing a political alternative for Nigerians. At that level, our leadership pool will be expanded and source of candidates also broadened to include leadership of mass organisations and professional bodies. It could be argued that they are already part of the leadership pool with Comrade Adams Oshiomhole serving as Governor of Edo State and Mr. Olurotimi Akeredolu (SAN), former President of Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) aspiring for Governorship of Ondo State under the ACN. These are based on individual aspirations and initiatives.
A key challenge facing Nigeria today is how to get the leaders of our opposition political parties to redefine our polity, create new democratic frontiers, reinvent political competitive rules and consequently challenge the status quo based on a strategy to decentralise and democratise power. Accordingly, the starting point must necessarily involve a rich mixture of different people from within and outside today’s poorly organised political parties and the wider society.
This challenge can best be appreciated if we correlate it with Gibson’s questions; “Are organisations spending too much time managing the present and not enough time creating the future? Why is it so challenging to think strategically about the future? And how do you create the incentive within an organisation to do so?”
The truth is that our leading opposition parties – ACN and CPC – spend too much time managing the individual aspirations of leaders, in this case Asiwaju Tinubu and Gen. Buhari, respectively. Why is it so difficult for these parties to think beyond the personal aspirations of these individuals? How can we create the incentive within these parties that would lead to an electoral future that is not based on the aspirations of these personalities? In fact, the dominance of the aspirations of these personalities constitutes a bottleneck to potential partnerships with interest groups.
As things stand, there are leaders of organisations, including labour and professional groups that wouldn’t want to negotiate any form of partnership with either ACN or CPC if such partnership is anchored around the presidential aspiration of Asiwaju Tinubu or Gen. Buhari for instance. Thus, what is needed in the circumstance is a situation whereby our opposition parties are able to decentralise power and democratise the strategy of producing leadership. This will require institution of fair and transparent processes that would lead to the emergence of candidates at all levels. Against this background, given the importance of parties’ presidential candidates, there is the need for the institution of all-inclusive, fair and transparent process. This would necessarily demand a new framework from what obtains today, whereby presidential candidates emerge exclusively from National Conventions.
One consideration could be the introduction of a system through which individual aspirants are tasked to first emerge from their wards, Local Governments, States and geo-political zones before finally emerging as flag bearers. This could entail a situation where at the preliminary levels, an aspirant must secure the endorsement of his/her ward, Local Governments and States based on some minimum number of votes. The process of voting should be clearly spelt out.
Once there are candidates that have emerged from all the 36 the states, the next level could be to have a process that would compel the winners to campaign within the party for the endorsement/votes of other states from the geo-political zones. In order to ensure that aspirants campaign among party members in other states other than their state of origin, in addition to simple majority vote, aspirants should have some minimum votes in at least two-thirds of the state in the geo-political zone. The minimum could be for instance 40%.
Having gone through the process of endorsements at the level of geo-political zones, aspirants would then be reduced to maximum of six. These six aspirants would then canvass for the votes of party members from all the states of the federation. And in order to ensure that all the aspirants are compelled to campaign among party members across the country, in addition to simple majority votes, they must secure some minimum number of votes in at least two-thirds of the states of the federation. Again, for hypothetical reasons, the minimum number of votes could be 40%.
At the end of the process, the National Convention of the party would then formally confirm the presidential candidate of the party and perform the flag-off of the presidential campaign. It is possible that the process could result in a situation where no aspirant satisfactorily meets the conditions required to emerge as a candidate of the party. In such a situation, another round of voting may take place at the National Convention involving the two leading candidates and the presidential candidate can emerge based on simple majority votes at the National Convention.
A process of this magnitude has the advantage of stimulating our polity and engendering more citizens’ participation in partisan politics. This is the kind of framework that will make partisan politics attractive and eventually, ordinary Nigerian electorates develop commitment to register their votes for an opposition candidate that emerges through such elaborate, transparent and fair process.
Lukman, a former NANS President and labour leader was the ACN candidate for the Kaduna North Senatorial Zone in the 2011 general elections.
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