Can the opposition win 2015 presidential election?

Bayo Olupohunda

‘No government can be long secure without formidable opposition’

—Benjamin Disraeli

 Can the opposition end the Peoples Democratic Party’s dominance of the presidency in 2015? When the country goes for another round of elections in the next three years, the PDP will have held the presidency for 16 years! Not even in the advanced democracies where good governance is the norm will a party have stayed in power for that long. A cohesive and vibrant opposition would have ensured that a controversial party like the PDP would find it difficult to return to power after its first term in office. Yet the party has ruled for the entire years this democracy has lasted. Alas, this is Nigeria where a fractured opposition and docile citizenry have ensured an unbroken run of disputed electoral victories for the party since 1999. An opposition victory in 2015 will be truly historic. There are also significant reasons why an opposition party presidency will be an unprecedented feat. It will mark the first time the country will be ruled at the centre by an opposition party. It may also signal the beginning of the end for the ruling party’s grip on power when the opposition presents a credible and competitive alternative to the current one-party dominance at the centre. Then, perhaps, Nigerians would also begin to experience true democratic governance. Never in the history of Nigeria’s democracy, not even in its 52 years of independence, has the opposition defeated the ruling parties in any presidential election.

The tragedy of governance in Nigeria, at least in the Fourth Republic, has been the inability of what presently constitutes a disparate opposition block to win power at the centre since 1999. That the PDP has clung to power for this long is an irony. Here is a party that has been blamed for many of the woes that presently confront us as a nation. The dismal statistics of the party’s 13 years in power are painfully visible to the ordinary eyes. For 13 years, it appears that the country has taken one step forward and several giant steps backward. In the many development indices that have been released in the last one decade, Nigeria has found a permanent place at the lowest rung of the ladder. The poverty level and the quality of life of the average Nigerian continue to nosedive at a frightening rate. The country has recently been reported by the Economist Intelligent Unit, a company within  The Economist group, as the worst place for a child to be born in 2013. The 2012 Transparency International Corruption Index placed the country as the 35th most corrupt nation in the world. Past reports from other credible local and international organisations have painted a grim picture of a country on the brink. Even many Nigerians believe that these reports understate the extent of the widespread rot in all areas of our national life. In the 13 years of PDP’s rule, insecurity of lives and property has worsened. Ethnic and religious conflicts are common place in all parts of the country. The government has, sadly, been unable to protect the citizens. Which sector has excelled under the ruling party’s governance? The health and education sectors are in a shambles. Youth unemployment has given rise to a growing crime rate. Terrorism which was hitherto an alien term has found its way into the country’s crime lexicon. Sadly, in spite of the level of stagnation, massive corruption, non-existent infrastructure and brigandage in government, the ruling party has held on to power in a vice-like grip. But going by the groundswell of angst in the land, could the party be heading for a major electoral shock in 2015? The question of PDP’s defeat rests on the opposition parties being sufficiently organised to give the party a run for its money.  Are they capable of providing the alternative government Nigerians yearn for in 2015? Can they mobilise Nigerians to vote for change in the coming elections? Is the opposition party the alternative Nigerians need or are they also part of the problems confronting us as a nation? An analysis of opposition politics in the Fourth Republic will reveal why opposition parties have failed to properly organise to defeat the PDP in past presidential elections. At the inception of democratic rule in 1999, the PDP emerged as the dominant party. This was in spite of the fact that many of the actors in the G-34 group that formed the party never actively fought against military dictatorship. Yet the party was a major beneficiary of the emergent civilian administration. The progressives under the umbrella National Democratic Coalition who fought for the end of military rule coalesced under the Alliance for Democracy. The party later merged with All Peoples Party to contest the elections which was won by the PDP under Olusegun Obasanjo. In 2003, the All Nigeria Peoples Party, an offshoot of the APP, having participated in the so-called National Government with the PDP was too weak and had become an appendage of the ruling party to effectively challenge it at the next presidential election of that year.

The AD which also had become a predominant party in the South-West was fighting its own internal battles among the warring factions of the socio-cultural Afenifere group that sought to dominate the party. But the elections of 2007 provided a rare opportunity for the opposition to effectively challenge the PDP. However, failed attempts at mergers weakened the parties’ stance to challenge the PDP. The election of 2007 was an opportunity for the opposition to displace the PDP. But selfish interests, ethnic mistrusts and clash of egos among the gladiators in the opposition parties were placed above the common good. A major feature of opposition politics in Nigeria’s political history has been their tendency to champion primordial ethnic interest.

It happened in the First Republic. It was a major feature of party politics in the Second Republic. During the abortive Third Republic of the Ibrahim Babangida years, attempts by the military junta to railroad so-called ‘new and old breed’ politicians into a two-party system was truncated by the ‘maradonic’ manoeuvres of its initiator.