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The ANPP Convention Elections: A Victory Over Military Dictatorship By Jide Ayobolu General Muhammadu Buhari’s chances of contesting the 2007 presidential elections on the platform of his political party, the All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP) hung in the balance as his candidates for the party positions were worsted at the national convention of the party in Abuja. Former speaker of the House of Representatives, Chief Edwin Ume Ezeoke who is believed to favour the party joining the new mega party, emerged the new national chairman of the party. Ume-Ezeoke scored 3,998 votes to defeat Chief Mike Ahamba who scored a total of 1,849 votes. Ahamba was believed to be Buhari’s choice. Senator Suleiman Kumo emerged as National Secretary after he was defeated Alhaji Abu Galadima who is said to be in the Buhari camp. The influx of ex-military officers has been unprecedented since 1999, these military personnel now see, the political arena as a vocation that they retire into, so, most of them do not see public office as an avenue for rendering selfless and qualitative service to the people, but instead another means of survival and eking out a livelihood. It is very instructive to note that most of them do not really understand in detail, what democracy and democratic values are. Most of them still have the military mentality, with the military high command structure, the centralized hierarchical structure as well as the obey before complain mindset. They now foist on the Nigerian politics this kind of military arrangement which has highly militarized politics in Nigeria. It would be recalled that, it is in this regard that the Ahmadu Ali’s faction of the PDP introduced garrison politics into Nigeria’s political firmament. This led to a situation where a duly elected national chairman was forced to resign at gun-point, it equally accentuated a situation where all the democratically elected officers of the party were removed in a military fashion and handpicked people imposed on the party and it also led to a situation in which members of the party were de-registered and new ones sought. The basic ingredients of democracy were brushed aside, namely, the freedom of expression, speech and thought, the freedom of association, the right to vote and be voted for, the emasculation of the media, the use of the coercive instruments and agencies of the state to terrorize the citizen, adoption of military tactics in a democratic setting and the gradual slip of the country into a banana republic or what has been called the organized police state. This military manipulation of the political process cuts across board in Nigeria’s political scene. It is with military divide and rule stratagems, that, schism as well as disaffection was caused in Alliance for Democracy, All Nigerian People’s Party, All Progressive Grand Alliance and it is this same military brute force and victory at all cost that is rocking the PDP presently. It is because politics has been viewed as a matter of life and death and winners-take-all, that the 1999 and election were massively rigged to the extent that, international observers had to complain very bitterly about the electoral fraud. It is very important to note that; first, militarization means the application of a great deal of coercion to democratic process. Order and conformity are maintained not so much through consensus as through violence and fear. The conformity thus achieved is confused with consensus; a leadership out of touch with its people has no chance of remedying this handicap. It goes on perpetrating all of arbitrariness on the people in the name of the people as the society divides into two hostile camps which are increasingly unable to communicate. From the point of view of the society at large, the salient political features of militarization are as follows: there is no expression of popular interests and no mobilization of their consensus and there is no accountability of leadership. The implication of this is very glaring, if development is to mean anything at all, it must mean the development of their potentialities. But development is not really possible if it not participative. External agents may facilitate this process but they cannot, even with the best of intentions, consummate it; in the final analysis a people develops itself through its own exertions or not at all. Where development is not participative it can only be the development of alienation and domination. It is therefore, with joy and gladness that I received the news of the victory over military dictatorship in ANPP, more so, that the country went through hell in the hands of the military jackboot in question, as the reign of terror and the iron law of oligarchy were visited upon the people through decree two and four in 1984. Hence, it is good news that the civilian has successfully taken back ANPP from the military and the challenge is now for the PDP to do the same. Jide Ayobolu No 19 Gongola Street Garki 2 Abuja-Nigeria.
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