Hot SourceWhat does it take to forge a new political coalition in Nigeria’s thoroughly abused and abased political ecosystem? A few grumbles, a handful of disgruntled politicians or poli-militias as the case may be and the hope that people can beat their vituperations into votes.
In 2014, as the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) entered the fifteenth year of its catastrophic chokehold over Nigeria, the All Progressives Congress was formed by a collection of politicians from other political parties, many of them former PDP members. In historic elections the next year, the PDP’s sixteeen-year-old stranglehold on power was finally shattered. It was a seismic upset in Nigeria’s political history. For the first time in national elections, the ruling political party crumbled.
It Is now official. The African Democratic Congress (ADC) can count itself one of Nigeria’s many political parties which is set to give the ruling APC a run for its money in the 2027 elections. What this means is clearly that there is a new entrant into the race that is shaping up to become one of Nigeria’s most exciting in years.
For years the ADC lay fallow, one of those parties making up the number on ballot papers, its fate eerily similar to that of the Labour Party in 2022 until Peter Obi decided to join it. But with the deluge of decampees, the party is set to pose the greatest challenge to the APC’s retention of the crown it scored, or snatched, in the 2023 general elections.
Despite the promise of disruptive instability, Nigeria would do with some change. While it is unwise to have a change of government every few years, the current administration has been an experiment in explosive disaster.
But the failings of the current administration cannot gloss over the catastrophic baggage many of those now corralled into the ADC by political expedience and convenience carry. In fact, one can easily say that the coalition is a glut of grumpy politicians who having failed to realize their increasingly unreasonable political aspirations elsewhere are now at their wits’ end and feel that the only way to get some change out of Nigeria’s old political guard is to proliferate political parties.
The sight of Abubakar Malami, a former Attorney General of the Federation, and especially Nasir El-Rufai, the former governor of Kaduna State in the coalition sickens Nigerians to no end. Many Nigerians are equally unsettled by the sight of the ageless and tireless Atiku Abubakar. The only good thing about the coalition at this point appears to be the presence of the wildly popular and acceptable Peter Obi. But there are doubts that his presence can offset some image issues others come with.
Yet, despite the character flaws of many in the coalition, it appears that Nigeria has become so bad under the current administration that Nigerians are desperate to consider a lesser evil. Indeed, that some Nigerians yearn for the return of the dark days of the Muhammadu Buhari administration speaks to how bad the situation has become.
What with a president whose integrity deficit distorts everything he does and a Federal Capital Territory minister whose gross grandiloquence futilely may just be a mask for paranoia.
In a country where politics is unfortunately the biggest distraction, the fireworks for 2027 have only just gone off. While Nigerians must avoid voting only in protest, the coalition must prove its credentials. Nigerians must be especially wary of whitewashed politicians who have bared their true colours in the past.
Since Nigerian politicians have become quite adept at the art of reinventing themselves, Nigerians must hone their senses to better detect that which is fake and do everything to discard same.
Kene Obiezu,
