A new mega party? It’s all about mega egos and value-free politics
The 2019 general elections are still about two years away, yet the season of political machinations has started to creep up on us. Over the past few weeks, there have been repeated reports in the media about secret moves by some politicians to form a new mega party to take on the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2019. According to this story, a faction of the People Democratic Party (PDP) led by Ahmed Shinkafi and an aggrieved group within the ruling APC, purportedly led by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and former Governor Bola Tinubu are in talks about floating the mega party. Of course, Atiku and Tinubu have denied any involvement, but I would take their denials with a pinch of salt. There is no smoke without fire, they say, and, so, there must be a kernel of truth in the repeated media reports that a new mega party is in the offing.
But my reaction is “here we go again”! We’ve been here before, haven’t we? Only two or three years ago, Nigeria was abuzz with activities by politicians across the country trying to form a mega party to challenge the then ruling party, PDP. They too denied it initially, but, eventually, when the plan was fully hatched, several leading PDP politicians – Atiku himself, five governors (the so-called G5), three former national chairmen and countless legislators and senior party officials – left the party and joined their counterparts in the then Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Tinubu’s party, the then Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), led by Muhammadu Buhari, the then All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP), and a faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), led by Rochas Okorocha, to form a mega party – the now ruling All Progressives Congress.
It was an extraordinary political alchemy; however, what emerged was not a coherent or cohesive political party with a soul and shared values, but rather a fragile coalition of strange political bedfellows, motivated by a dogged desire to seize and control power at the centre. Of course, they achieved that unprecedented feat, by dislodging the ruling party and incumbent president from power! But since then, APC has been struggling to hold its shaky coalition together, jumping from one internal crisis to another. The party’s leadership is paralysed by oligarchic rivalries, while its National Assembly members are a law unto themselves, throwing party discipline to the wind!
Political parties are governed by a conventional structure and a set of rules, and individual ambitions are usually subordinated to the wider interests of the party. But this only happens when parties are formed not merely as a vehicle for acquiring power but primarily as a constellation of coherent values, ideas, beliefs and policies by people who have shared dispositions on these issues. But so-called mega parties in Nigeria are not formed by people who share the same core values, principles and policy preferences but by those who merely want to use them as vehicles to gain power. This is why they are like empires that rise and fall due to internal inconsistencies and tensions. For instance, the then leviathanic PDP fell largely because it became a house divided against itself; and the APC looks set to follow that fate as it struggles to unify its fragile and fractious coalition.
To be clear, I believe in “creative destruction”, a term coined by the economist Joseph Schumpeter in his book “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy” (1942). This is, according to Schumpeter, “a process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionalises the economic structure from within; incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one”. Creative destruction is credited for economic and technological progress in the world. But the concept is not only relevant to economic theory, it has political adaptations. For instance, a political party whose values have become outdated can face an internal disruption that leads to the creation of a new party with alternative values or ideas.
Take one example. The UK Labour Party was founded in 1900 as a working-class party, but in 1981 a faction broke away to form the Social Democratic Party (SDP), arguing that Labour had veered too much to the left as a socialist party. The SDP later merged with the Liberal Party to form the Liberal Democrats. Today, broadly speaking, the Lib Dem provides a liberal voice in British politics; the Conservative represents a conservative view, while Labour is the main party of social justice. Surely, the creative destruction that led to a break-away faction in Labour has enriched British politics with the emergence of a liberal viewpoint. But the key point here is that, in serious democracies, when parties split and regroup, it is usually driven by core values and principles and less by self-interested motivations.
The issue of values and interests in politics is, indeed, an interesting one. Those who take a sociological view argue that people are motivated in politics by values and normative dispositions, and not by self-interested calculations. But the rational-choice school posits that political behaviour is shaped by self-interest and strategic calculations rather than by normative values. In truth, though, both values and interests are parts of politics. No politician is completely without values and none is completely devoid of interests. The key question is which of these predominates: values or interests? The received view in the literature is that values and norms are so deeply ingrained that they usually prevail over considerations of self-interest in shaping political behaviour.
But these findings do not have general application. For in Nigeria, only few politicians are in politics because of some deeply ingrained values or norms. The vast majority are in politics based on self-interest; they are What’s-In-It-For-Me (WIIFM) politicians. This is why there is so much fluidity of party affiliations in Nigeria. Just consider what happened after PDP lost the presidency last year. Immediately President Jonathan conceded defeat to Buhari, PDP members began to defect in droves to the APC. The number of PDP defectors became so embarrassingly high that APC’s national chairman, John Odigie-Oyegun, was forced by public reactions to issue a press statement urging PDP members to “stay in their party”, arguing that the gale of defections “is not good for political development”.
Of course, political turncoatism is rampant in Nigeria because, as I said, politics and party formation in this country is not based on values or principles. Where a party stands for something and the members believe in what it stands for, party loyalty will be strong. Members will not desert the party simply because it loses an election or because they don’t get what they want. This was why, despite losing to Hillary Clinton, in the bitterly contested presidential primaries, Bernie Sanders didn’t leave the Democratic Party but instead campaigned vigorously for Clinton in the presidential election, and it was why after Clinton shockingly lost to Donald Trump, no member of the Democratic Party defected to the Republican Party. But in Nigeria, thanks to personal egos and value-free politics, party loyalty and affiliations are so fluid and fickle that the so-called mega parties are not immune to decline and eventual collapse.
Last year, in an article titled “PDP’s post defeat trauma and the cycle of grief”, I urged the party to come to terms with its loss, learn from its mistakes, show remorse, rebuild and rise again! But, unfortunately, the PDP has proved woefully incapable of handling its loss. It has never known peace since losing the election, with two intractably divisive factions. On the other hand, the APC has failed abysmally to manage its electoral success due to big egos and lack of shared values. Think of it, what do Tinubu and Bukola Saraki have in common politically? In fact, what does progressivism really mean in Nigeria? Is it just about giving hand-outs to the poor through social intervention programmes? What about reforms? Most of the structural reforms in the UK, such as the massive devolution of powers to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which gave them more or less self-rule, were carried out under Labour, a progressive party. But here in Nigeria, APC is opposed to political restructuring. And what about the PDP? What does it really stand for? We just don’t know!
Nigeria needs strong parties with strong values and competing visions that won’t disintegrate after winning or losing elections. But that won’t happen if mega parties are just value-free collections of strange political bedfellows who simply want a big party as a vehicle to win election. For me, Nigeria needs a party that genuinely and viscerally believes in reforms – political restructuring, economic reforms, institutional transformation – and whose leaders and members are committed to these values. If a new mega party emerges from the PDP and APC that promotes these ideals, that would be a welcome creative destruction. But if it’s the same old egoistic and value-free politics, well, put simply, I am not impressed, nor should Nigeria be!
Olu Fasan