Nigeria's Political Parties: The Need for ideology

By

Senator (Comrade) Uche Chukwumerije

A Lecture Presented at the 26^th Memorial Anniversary of

Malam Aminu Kano held at Sa’adu Zungur Auditorium, Mambayya House on April 17, 2009

          Nigerian political class has a lot to learn from the ideological profile of NEPU, its legacy of commitment to principles, and the personification of the legacy by the lifestyle of its leader, Mallam Aminu Kano, if our political parties are to be the conveyors and articulators of positive political values. Without such values and such vehicles to carry them forward, our nation and her democracy will remain at best mired in a circularity of ceaseless motions without forward movement.

          The short piece is on the crying need for distinct ideologies in our political parties. It treats the subject in three parts.

1.                 A definition of ideology. The NEPU / PRP example.

2.                 Survey of the ideological profiles of Nigeria’s political parties.

3.                 The need for an ideology in our political parties.

1.  Ideology:  The NEPU/PRP Example

                   What do we mean by ideology?

I want to reverse the normal process of answering a question. It is helpful to preface the answer with a description of NEPU/PRP legacy, situated in the historical context in which Mallam Aminu Kano and NEPU and its successor, PRP, operated.

1.i      Birth of Political Parties

          The decade from 1940’s to early 1950’s marked the outbreak of a serious threat to British rule in Nigeria. A century-old strategy of colonial rule, based on a most economic and inexpensive plan of divide and rule – indirect rule in the North and direct rule in the south - had seemed to be succeeding. The aim of creating and fostering a secure market for Britain economy and planting a British political value system as the overarching political norm over the two-tiered colony was working. In the north, the collusion of the interests of London and the Emirate system had reinforced an existing feudal system that flourished on the denial of nearly all rights to the masses.  In the South, the training and apprenticeship of thoroughly anglicized natives, expected to play the role of surrogates to British system, had continued apace. But by 1940, the house had begun to tumble. The heightened political consciousness of the new BBU (I mean British Brought Up, not Bala Brought Up!) educated Nigerians had begun to foster simmering revolt over foreign occupation.  The main vehicles of the discontent were National Council of Nigeria and Cameroons (NCNC), Northern Peoples Congress (NPC), Action Group (AG), Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU) and United Middle Belt Congress (UMBC).  From the womb of British system were emerging the seeds of its own destruction. In self-defence, the colonial system responded to the situation with a combination of all the guiles and cruelty that it could master.

          It was in this political and social context that NEPU arrived at the scene. The setting of the political terrain and field of social struggle was marked by one feature – the determined effort of the British to control these emerging vehicles of decolonization, the political parties – to modulate their agitation and moderate the objectives of the political parties.  Evidence abound that the birth of two of the political parties, NPC and AG, were either mid-wifed or inspired by the British, as a counter to the first –national/nationalist party, NCNC. On political behaviour, existing literature reveals that in either their lifestyles or affinity of class interests or  pull of business aspirations, the leaders of the three major political parties – Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe of NCNC, Sir Ahmadu Bello of NPC and Chief Obafemi Awolowo of AG were led to moderate their political temperament and confine their objectives to colonial definition and terms of independence. Lastly, it is public knowledge that, inspite of the permanent malignant salience of its presence in Nigeria plural setting, promotion of ethnic and regional sectionalism into an explosive public issue in the critical incubation period of the early twentieth century was a deliberate strategy of the colonial master to smother the fire fanned by the new wave of national consciousness and nationalist agitation. In summary, the British system sought to wean the political parties into a path of genteel, peaceful, orderly transition to ‘independence.’

1.ii.    A distinct ideology

All the parties developed this neo-colonial character except NEPU. (Among the major parties, the nearest effort at ideology came from Action Group but its latter-day slant of Democratic Socialism, which was really a tactical response to the reactionary image of NPC/NCNC coalition, lacked the coherence of a systematic espousal and the sincerity of NEPU adherents because AG’s leadership remained as comfortably capitalist and bourgeois as its counterparts in NPC and NCNC).  All the parties fought for the goal of ‘independence’ from colonial rule but NEPU and Mallam Aminu Kano were further preoccupied with the quality of rule as measured by the equality of all citizens and upliftment of the down-trodden, both in the existing colonial system and beyond. In pursuit of its initial battle cry in Sawaba Declaration, that “the emancipation must be the work of the Talakawa  themselves,” the supporters of NEPU loudly questioned the basis of the existing social arrangement with its inequalities and fearlessly mobilized the peasantry to reject every form of oppression. Other parties reined in or disowned any of their members and affiliates that temperamentally sought more radical approaches to decolonization outside the genteel pacifist format of colonial tutelage.  One party, NCNC, virtually disowned its radical members, Zikist Movement, for departure from this Establishment approach. On the other hand, the whole of NEPU, both leadership and followership, spearheaded this confrontational approach. Infact all the three major parties and their leaders considered NEPU and its leader at one stage or the other as too radical for their decolonization programmes.

          It is therefore obvious that their different responses to colonial expectations of ‘responsible’ decolonization process marked out NEPU as different from the other parties; the differences were most marked in ideological commitment. The ideological profile of NEPU had three features which others largely lacked –  (i) clarity of thought on preferred state of the political system , (ii)  programme of action and (iii) integrity of leadership.

1.ii. a. A clarity of doctrine

          On ideological clarity, definitive doctrines ran through all political statements of NEPU – equality of all human beings and equitable distribution of products of the social system. Its maiden policy statement, the Sawaba Declaration of 1950, was the most comprehensive. It declared in part:-

“1.     That the shocking state of social order as at present existing in Northern Nigeria is due to nothing but the family compact rule of the so-called Native Administration in their present autocratic form.

“2.    That owing to this unscrupulous and vicious system of administration by the family compact rules and which has been established and fully supported by the British imperialist government, there is today in our society an antagonism of interest, manifesting itself as a class struggle…

3.       That this antagonism can be abolished only by the emancipation of the Talakawa  from the domination of these privileged few and by the reform of the present autocratic political institutions into Democratic institutions and placing their democratic control in the hands of the Talakawa for whom alone they exist

          …

6.       That all political parties are but the expression of class interest, and as the interest of the Talakawa diametrically opposed to the interest of all sections of the master class, both white and black, the party seeking the emancipation of the Talakawa must naturally be hostile to the party of oppressors.

7.       The Northern Elements Progressive Union of Northern Nigeria therefore being the only political party of the Talakawa, enters the field of political action determined to reduce to nonentity any party of hypocrites and traitors to our mother country, and calls upon all sons and daughters of Northern Nigeria to muster under its banner to the end, that a speedy termination may be wrought to this vicious system of administration which deprives them of the fruits of their labour, and that POVERTY may give place to COMFORT, PRIVILEGE to EQUALITY, and political, economic and social SLAVERY to FREEDOM”

          It is true that this declaration was a specific response to a local social situation, the feudal system of Northern Nigeria, and that it lacked the systematic presentation and universal sweep of a theory. The leader, Mallam Aminu Kano, defended this approach as a deliberate strategy of working outwards from the particular to a universal truth.

Mallam summed it thus:

“ To approach the people one most use identifiable means, coded in words and images that they understand   –  analysis, simplicity, approachability, that which appeals to them directly. If then local needs can be related to the regional and national needs, ideology will result”.

          However, what NEPU lacked in formal conceptualization of its doctrines was amply provided by its ideologically conscious successor, PRP. Re-instating the political philosophy of NEPU, PRP declared:

“The heart of the current trend in our economic and political development is the mutual reinforcement of four distinct forces, namely, the ‘new rich’, a rapacious but client professional class, resurrected traditional aristocracy, and external imperialist circles. These constitute the so-called social motor of ‘national progress’. The two pairs of giant wheels bearing this social motor are NPN/NPP conglomerate and UPN/GNPP squad. There can be no national progress along this route.”

Describing the character of the society, PRP continued: the root causes of the social evils of our society are the abuse of money and power; exploitation of the ignorance and poverty of the masses. Money, instead of being put to its proper use as a means of exchange, is used to buy power, to pervert justice, to procure positions of prominence and to influence government. Having used money to buy power or having come to power through money for those in power and those in the corridors of power. Ambitious men, men hungry for power and money, use religious and tribal sentiments to divide the ignorant and simple people of this country. Money mongers exploit poor people. They organize workers and pay them a pittance while the exploiters amass huge profits. They buy cheap from the peasant farmers while selling dear to the needy. Even elections are made the bye-product of money. This is the appalling system under which we live and operate. The nation thus becomes gripped in the vicious stronghold of greed and power. All pious denunciation of bribery, corruption, tribalism, nepotism, indiscipline and the high increase in crime rate is sweet nonsense. Until we tackle boldly and openly the root causes of our social evils, and do this now, there will be no hope of a bright future for the coming generations.

As a remedy to the unacceptable state of social arrangement, PRP offered a solution in the creation of a new social order. It declared:

          The new social order (which) the PRP seeks to create is one of social and economic justice… The new social order concerns man and his environment and must manifest itself in liberating the ordinary citizens of this country – the worker, the peasant, the farmer, the petty trader, the messenger, the clerk – from poverty, ignorance, disease and exploitation. The new social order must mean a just wage for work done, a fair reward for successful effort. A just wage must be relative to the cost of living, and a fair reward must be measured in terms of increases to production and promotion of the common good. The new social order must make the ordinary citizen aware of his duties and responsibilities to the nation; and equally the citizen must know his right and have the courage and confidence to demand these rights from the nation”

As indicated earlier, NEPU’s ideology did begin with the particular – the oppression of the peasantry and the poor in Northern Nigeria by the feudal system in partnership with the crude elemental capitalism of colonialism, but through words and action it developed into a universal (national) statement. Subsequent events lent credence to Aminu Kano’s claims of deliberate choice of the language and perspective of a particular concrete situation as a strategic option. The subsequent events include NEPU’s  alliance with an explicitly national party, NCNC, its affiliations with other like-minded national movements and associations that articulated radical rejection of existing social and political system, consistent opposition to delineation of Nigeria into ethnocentric units, support of geopolitical constituencies that cut across ethnic boundaries, the responses of the leader, Mallam Aminu Kano, to national events, the massive attraction of progressives from all over Nigeria to NEPU’s successor, PRP, the nationally celebrated exemplary lifestyle of Mallam and his emergence as a national reference point in simplicity, selfless service and honesty, and the faithful  elaboration of Sawaba Declaration into a pointedly more ideological language by PRP.  These activities evidenced the broadening of the sectoral (Northern) front into a national all-Nigeria battle field, in consistent pursuit of NEPU’s original basic principles of – equality, social justice and equitable distribution of wealth.

          The pitch of NEPU/ PRP ideological concerns was different from that of other parties. It was a legacy consistently unblinking in its focus on the need for a new social arrangement in which the poor and the down-trodden would have a dominant presence in the economic system. Its pitch of analysis, centered on the processes of this exploitation, was different from the external focus of all the other parties on foreign colonialism. Indeed, what could be passed as the ideologies of the three major parties were rival gallant efforts to think within the colonial box. Theirs were decolonization programmes, not ideologies, and these programmes were up-dates of colonial governance manuals edited to accommodate the roll-call of the new prospective Nigerian successors about to benefit from the forthcoming change of guards. The major parties were poised to inherit, not transform, the colonial state.

1.ii.b  Programme of action   

The second important aspect of distinct ideological personality is programme of action.  The mobilization strategies of the political parties spoke eloquently of the quality of their ideologies. The three major parties – founded by aristocratic/feudal interests or aspiring bourgeois elitist groups who were increasingly engrossed in their plans to succeed the colonial masters – rested their mobilization efforts on recruitment of existing centers of influence (traditional rulers, professional groups, bourgeoning administrative middle class, and, emerging business class), although one of them, NCNC scored a remarkable departure, with its alliance with the radical nationalist trade union movement led by Michael Imoudu and the accidental discharge of a premature child, Zikist Movement, which it quickly disowned.  However, beyond the common struggle for independence from colonial rule, this broad social formation of elitist interests, represented by the leadership of the three major parties was not structured to challenge the fundamental basis of the existing system. Their decolonization style was a jamboree of rallies fed on promise of life more abundant with arrival of independence: the driving motive of this struggle was transfer of the national cake to the custody of new conclaves of Nigerian leaders.  Theirs was a top to bottom mobilization scheme.

But the target audience of NEPU mobilization was different. Mobilized on a do-it-yourself philosophy, the down-trodden masses embraced NEPU as their own weapon of salvation. Its highly decentralized structure operated on a platform of equality and total involvement of all members, and on alliance of think-alike groups and associations throughout the ethnic and sub-ethnic groups of the country. Its uncompromising stance of No to injustice and inequality meant torture, imprisonment and the worst forms of intimidation and denial. But the leadership cadre and the supporters were prepared to bear the consequences of their political conviction. It was a bottom-to-top mobilization of the masses.  It was not an accident nor an exceptional case of excesses of Northern feudal system that NEPU’s president was the only national political party president who suffered imprisonment while the British system turned the other way as its agent, the Emirate system, executed the jail sentence. Beside the leadership of Zikist Movement, no top leaders of NCNC, NPC or A.G. suffered imprisonment for their political activities.

The result of this ability to suffer the consequences of its ideological preferences further reinforced NEPU’s ideological commitment. What followed was a deep entrenchment of a value system which remained largely resistant to the disorientation of material inducements, the familiar weapon of the elite political class. It was the strong internalization of this value system that gave depth and resilience to NEPU, turning it from a political party into a grass-roots movement. The gallant performance of the adherents of NEPU-PRP legacy in all the elections from 1959 to 1983 in spite of the rigging, bribery and intimidation of the elite parties, testifies to the ideologically moulded character of its mass structure.

1.ii.c  Leadership

          A third point of ideology departure from the other parities is NEPU’s leadership. It must be conceeded that leaders of the first generation of political parties were generally modest in their lifestyles and largely uncorrupt in their demands on public resources. But even in that era of relative innocence, the lifestyle of the leader of NEPU was outstanding. He lived a spartan life, comparable only to Ghandi’s.   The core of NEPU’s leadership cadre also lived in the austere manner of single-minded foot soldiers.  For Mallam, I recall vividly the hot sultry afternoon on April 17 1983 when I had to summon all my will-power to resist fainting spells from the unbearable heat in the course of a 2-hour brief from Mallam in his sitting room – probably his last brief to a senior party officer – before I hurriedly raced to the airport to catch a Kabo flight back to Lagos. His house proudly shunned every comfort, including a generator and any effective cooling fan. His lifestyle was such a prominently illustrative high point of NEPU-PRP ideology of egalitarianism that it virtually became synonymous, in public view, with the ideology.   Such a profile differed radically from the image of the leadership of the other parties.  Most in the leadership of other parties including even UMBC were either aspiring capitalists or left no observer in doubt that they were determined to escape via politics from the misery of want and poverty to a higher level of life more abundant.  The mind-cast of the pioneer major parties foreshadowed the mercantilist attitude that progressively dominated the behaviour of political actors in post independence Nigeria. 

1.ii.d. Test of power.

          The review of NEPU as an example will not be complete without a brief statement on the final point of test of a party’s will to implement an ideological programme when such a party secures executive political power.  Unlike NEPU, the three major political parties assumed political power in the first Republic. In various ways, they implemented their manifestoes, but their efforts were logically in a neocolonial direction. There was little change to inherited colonial framework of action beyond series of incremental innovations which, under the stimulus of regional rivalries, had to give priority attention to issues that assured regional pre-eminence. The same pattern continued in the second Republic.

          NEPU’s opportunities for such a test of will through performance in government produced mixed results. In the first Republic it controlled no Government but its alliance with NCNC, a partner with NPC in the Federal Government, fetched an allocation of the post of Chief Whip in Federal House of Representatives which its leader, Mallam Aminu Kano occupied. This was a situation of responsibility without power which created for NEPU serious contradictions, especially agonizing doubts among some members about the strategic value of what they saw as a compromise decision. The purely legislative post of Chief whip had no executive powers to check the brutal reprisals of NPC-controlled Northern Nigeria government against the activities of NEPU supporters in the region. In the Second Republic, NEPU’s successor, PRP, came to power for the first time in NEPU’s long struggle. But its two state governments soon broke away from the party on the grounds of what they saw as the leader’s infidelity to ideological principles. The ideological aspect will be briefly discussed later, but on the issue of performance in government, one point should be noted here.  In programme of action complementing ideological postulation, PRP did show that NEPU in government was determined to implement what it preached. Whatever the difficulties that arose later, it was generally agreed, even by opponents, that the PRP regimes confronted more purposefully than any regime before or after them the problem of adult education, women illiteracy, poverty alleviation and socialization of wealth in their states. In lifestyle, one of the governors, Balarabe Musa of Kaduna, maintained the virtues of the spartan lifestyle of Mallam Aminu Kano. However, none of the governments radically changed the inherited underlying economic system.

          We have sketched this ideological profile of NEPU/PRP legacy as an illustration from which we intend to proceed to offer a brief definition of ideology, its importance in national development, and the features that could make or mar the effective growth of an ideologically-committed political party. The tenacity of NEPU–PRP ideological struggle has high-lighted three features as the hallmark of its operation.   One is the unequivocal projection of equality and social justice as its preferred basis of the society. The second is its fighting stamina which withstood all social pressures for over 30 decades. The third is the progressive changes in the political and social system of the federation, especially Northern Nigeria, which came partly, and in some cases, mainly as the harvest of NEPU’s years of unrelenting firmness.

1.ii.e. Definition of Ideology

What, then, is Ideology?

          Ideology is a system of doctrines that seeks to explain and change the world, (or a given society or state). It seeks to interpret the working and structure of society and posit the need for a change in the existing situation through a programme of practical politics predicated on a comprehensive theory of human nature and requiring long social struggle for attainment of its goals. Ideology, characterized thus, has four dimensions – (i) contents (ii) programme of action (iii) functions and (iv) effective leadership. Contents refers to the systematic body of basic philosophical principles espousing the character of an existing social system, its flaws, and the merits of a new social order. Political programme of action refers to a set of proposals designed to effect the postulated changes in the existing system.  Function refers to the value of the ideology as a perceptional screen which sifts the proposed remedial options.  To an ideologically-committed party, ideology is what a needle is to the compass of a ship.  Leadership refers to quality of leaders and managers whose vision of a radical improvement of an existing system is crystal-clear, leaders who possess integrity to live what they preach and leaders who command enough mobilisation skills to lead the organisation through a protracted struggle to ideologically designated goals.

          Locally re-interpreted, political ideology means concise and clear body of beliefs that explains the nature of the Nigerian state, projects what it should be, and sign-posts a programme of action to achieve its prescribed remedy. Defined in this homely light, the challenge of ideology to our political parties is extricated from the pejorative connotations of the didactic universal nostrums and evangelical panaceas that marked the cold war era.

          Applied to our situation, the call of ideology (as principles, clear policy preferences and a programme of action) is directed to three key problems confronting the Nigerian society:-

i.                    Economic development: Economic arrangement of a society is the mother of all its sub-systems.  It determines the complexion of social and political subsystems.  How do we want to produce and share wealth in Nigeria? On the principle of the greatest good to the greatest number, or on the principle of IMF/World Bank’s dictates of pure market economy and survival of the fittest? On the principle of sustainable development and self-reliance or on the principle of profligate consumption and share of the national cake?

ii.                  Political development: Political development must answer the fundamental question of depth and scope of citizens’ participation in governance – distribution of power and authority among social groups/classes, state of the civil society and reality of individual freedoms and rights.

iii.                National stability: Level of national cohesion and stability is a function of the performance of the first two variables.  What system will nurse and sustain the loyalty and love of the citizenry for the Nigerian state and foster the growth of nationhood?

These issues are fundamental issues which should give food for thought to a political party determined to transform Nigeria and make a difference in governance.  Although the military usurped almost two-thirds of the 50 years independent existence of Nigeria, the last one decade has witnessed the continuous civilian reign of multi-party democracy.  If we assume that the long period from 1960 through the military regimes to 1999 is a sobering lesson to the political class, the question is: have the political parties learnt the importance of applying themselves seriously and selflessly to the task of governance and how creatively have they thought about solutions to the problems of the country, as may be seen from their ideological positions?  We intend now to take a look at the manifestoes of the current political parties and appraise their ideological profiles.

2.i      CURRENT POLITICAL PARTIES

          This table above is at-a-glance mirror of the manifestoes of the fifty registered political parties. It uses three measures – political statement, economic programme (wealth generation), and economic development: implementation.  The three, taken together, give a useful insight into a political party’s ideological profile. Political statement refers to a party’s ideas on the character of the Nigerian state and political community – what it is and what it should be.  Economic development is divided into two components – ‘wealth generation’ which sheds light on a political party’s response to the basic problem of underdevelopment and ‘economic development: implementation’ which measures its approach to the challenges in the various sectors.   

2.i.     The following facts emerge from this survey:-

i.                    Only three out of the 50 registered parties offer clear statement on the character of existing political and social system and ideas on its improvement.

ii.                  All except four are content with existing mode of economic development and have offered, at best, vague platitudes about improvement.

iii.                On income re-distribution, eleven offered minimal welfare schemes in forms of limited free facilities in education and health, or modification of tax regimes or vague promises of improvement of labour condition.

iv.               All, except five, are blank on initiatives in sectoral reforms.

2.ii.    Objectives

From these facts, some observations are in order.

          The first is the general lack of explicit political ideology as a general statement outlining the principles that inform a party’s view of Nigeria and its remedial political programme. We say lack of explicit ideology because implicit in the pragmatic programme of each party is a silent agreement with the existing mainstream political value.  The value is a product of over a century of practice, bequated by colonial rule, nurtured by post-independence politics, and sanctified by international norms – norms such as free market economy and the palliative of welfarism along with its political correlates of ‘freedom’ and ‘equality’.

          However reality suggests that in Nigeria norms are obeyed more in breach than in usage. The wide gap between prescription and practice therefore offers a rich virgin field and ample space to a political party for innovative ideas on social/political reforms. This has not happened. What the political parties have generally postulated as political ideologies are sets of placebos and mantras of a chorus of crowd sing-along’s.

          Since their thoughts barely were engaged with what Nigeria is and what is right or wrong with her existing system, most of the political parties are not prompted to offer any ground-breaking views about an alternative way of reorganizing the society.

          But it is the issues of poverty alleviation and sustainable economic development or self-reliance that underline the poverty of the ideological content of our political parties. On welfare, taxation and other forms of re-distribution of wealth, none offers an outstanding departure from solution to the worsening problem of dichotomization of the society between the extremely rich few and the extremely poor majority.  The contingent danger of mass unemployment and its link with spiraling social insecurity receive no systematic treatment. 

          The apparently uniform approach of the political parities to the nation’s problems share a heritage of ideological barrenness of post-independence Nigeria. A few remarkable examples will illustrate this point.  In 1998, three persons master-minded the authorship of PDP’s constitution. When a party misunderstanding took the three persons to APP, there they replicated the same constitution for the new party.  Again, another crisis occurred and took them to a new party, AD, there again they were entrusted with the responsibility of producing the constitution of the new party.  This meant that within a short period of six weeks, three different versions of virtually the same constitution had been produced for three parties.  And the source material for the three was probably the template of Action Group Constitution of the First Republic!!

Babangida’s Parastatals model was another instance.  The Babangida regime mocked the relevance of ideology to political parties and national political development when it tired to decree two national political parties and two ideologies.  The two parastatals distinguished themselves, according to a BBC reporter, by one doctrinal difference: namely, one spoke about fish farming and the other was silent on it!

An extreme case of uniformity of outlook to a national problem manifested itself in the searches of the five political parties of Abacha regime for their presidential candidates.  Each nominated General Abacha, the incumbent head of the Federal Military Government – a situation that provoked Bola Ige to dismiss the political parties as five leprous fingers of the same hand.

If Nigerian political actors used the state as instruments of their will, as Prof. Claude Ake observed, it is not uncharitable to describe our current 50 registered parties as alliances and cliques of convenience set up by clubs to facilitate group access to the national till.

3.       The Imperative of Ideology

The absence of clearly distinct and different ideologies in our political parties is the bane of Nigeria’s political development. Political parties constitute the arteries and veins that feed the blood of political values into Nigeria’s body politic. Without such nutrition, the body will at best remain weak and atrophy.

          There are three grounds which should compel a serious attention to the necessity of distinct ideologies.  By ideology, I mean no more than a full statement on a political party’s appraisal of the Nigerian society, its vision of an improved country, and its plans to realize this vision, if voted into power. Surely, this is not an inconsiderate demand from an electorate to whom a party is applying for mandate to govern.

3.i.     The first ground is that political parties are both the producers and conveyor belts of political values.  It requires the persistence of ideologically committed political parties to articulate these values and through their consistency transform them into integral components of our democratic culture. Key values like equality and freedom acquired the central salience which they have occupied in popular mind partly because they were the focal points of the decolonization struggle but mainly, especially in the political system of the North, owing to the energetic and consistent articulation of their necessity by NEPU. NEPU’s strength of conviction and relentless pursuit of its objective yielded in time several benefits to the political system and the society. The gains from such a consistent struggle expanded the democratic space. The point must be emphasized that the gestation period of new ideas burrowing its roots through the rocky grounds of vested interests into effective accommodation in an existing social/political system requires an intense and sustained struggle – definitely a time span longer than the profit calculations of business contractor/political actors of current political parties.  Just as in the case of NEPU in Nigeria, it took Britain’s Labour Party decades of unwavering commitment to transmute Fabian socialism into noteworthy features of British political landscape.

          The present generation of political parties puts little premium on this kind of orientation. Very few, if any, concern themselves with ideals and values. The general concern is narrow personal interests. Politics is seen as the surest and quickest route to personal wealth. Pragmatism is treasured over idealism, and shrewd calculations of personal material profit and loss over the stimulation of ideology and rewards to the society.  Few political actors are prepared to risk isolation and exclusion from the patronage of a winning party.

          The subordination of ideological principles to individual material goals has leeched negative values into the body politic. A highly amoral and opportunist social order in which end is glorified above means, and unearned wealth above labour now reigns. The nation has degenerated to a society of mercenaries and diamond-diggers. The negative values of the wider civil society mirror the astronomical rise of electoral irregularities, switches of party allegiances, corruption and cynical disregard for rule of law in the polity. Democracy has degenerated into plutocracy and kleptocracy.

          This decay can be checked by the strong presence of popular mass-based ideological parties. As in the case in all democracies, the positive values of well-grounded political parties such as freedom, equality, justice, accountability and tolerance should coalesce and feed into the mainstream of our democratic culture.

3.ii.    The second point is the necessity of clearly different options of economic development with their different political and social consequences for the whole society and its different classes. All the economic problems that mocked the virility of our independence have gathered more strength and developed wider tentacles with every succeeding regime, civilian or military, in spite of three decades of unprecedented oil-fuelled prosperity. Four Republics and sixty four political parties have tinkered with them. Minus one or two that offered a rehash of undomesticated certitudes from the universal ism’s of the cold war era, none volunteered an analysis or programme different from conventional practice. What has continually expanded and now occupies the policy centre is a bureaucracy-driven incrementalist approach in which more of the same is added to the same sameness by each succeeding regime. It is hardly surprising that no political party has ever made the issue of the ideal path to Nigeria’s economic development and self-reliance its major electoral issue or challenged its opponents to debate over the right answer to the recurrent decimals of our economic problems and circular motion of underdevelopment.

          Allied to this is the issue of decay of our institutions, the support base of a democratic structure.  The long military interregnum has undermined these institutions.  Take, for instance the political parties, which constitute the flagship of structures of popular democracy.  The military’s familiar diktat of ordering formulation of political parties and conducting elections, all within a few months, means that political parties are hastily formed and their common positions hurriedly negotiated.  Bureaucracy has suffered a more serious harm than political party system.  The long history of military rule has destroyed it.  It has taken up Bureaucracy to the phenomenal empowerment of “super-permanent secretaries” of Gowon era and later brought it down to a steep devaluation with the wave of arbitrary retirements of Murtala era.  The change of fortune destroyed confidence in civil service and what has followed is a quiet readjustment to individual self-pursuit in preparation for the rainy day.  Cynics say that a civil service officer shares his or her daily working time as follows – 40% to self-aggradisement, 20% to intrigues against rivals, 20% to counter-manouvres against rivals intrigues, 10% to routine matters, and 5% to activities that actually add value to the system.  It is a picture of malaise.  Also, the military did not help matters in the installation of well-considered constitutions.  To hastily prepare and churn out a Constitution, the grundnorm of the Federation, in six weeks, as 1999 Constitution was done by Gen. Abdulsallam, seemed to underline the military’s calculation of handing out a transition platform that was designed to fail.  All other institutions in Nigeria have registered similar decline and decay since 1960.

          An ideologically oriented party ought to appreciate the importance of institutions in nation-building and seek to re-position them in their ideological paradigms for a better society.

          The pattern highlighted by the table of ideological profiles promises no early end to this malaise.

3.iii.   The third area of necessity is definition or re-definition of Nigeria especially in the face of the slagging pace of process of national unity. The issue of national unity is central to the future of Nigeria. All other issues are premised on it. It is a united stable country that provides a secure warehouse to her economic and social activities.

          The wobbling pace and unclear direction of Nigeria’s national integration after almost fifty years of independence should give enough room for creative thought to ideologically driven political parties. Challenges to thought and action beacon from all tiers and corners of the polity. The spirit of national unity, measured by the affective disposition of the citizens towards the Nigeria State, has been on consistently downward trend since 1960. A rule-of-thumb graph reveals an orientational decline like this: in the sixties, no body bothered about one’s tribe because the normal point of focus and interaction was one’s Nigerianness; in the seventies and eighties, the general expectation shifted to one’s state of origin. By nineties, the point of identification became tribe, inspite of the release of new generation of social forces into the political centre by IBB regime’s bold social political programmes. By the first decade of the twenty first century, the general expectation is that mention of one’s name should be immediately suffixed with tribal and state origin for prima facie identification and citizen profile.  All this means that progressively the place of Nigeria State is being relegated to a low index of our citizen profile. The contour of our federalism has taken similar plunge. By the sixties, it was a balanced partnership between the centre and viable federating units. By the turn of the century – after forty years of military interregnum – it has become a cross breed between proto-federal and unitary systems, offering neither the firm pull of centralized direction nor the team pull of multiple efforts. In place of rich plural unity from corperative federalism, a conglomeration of disparate seemingly ‘federating’ units held together by common dependence on the centre’s largesse and states’ fear of the centre’s coercion powers. Statism, designed to provide healthy decentralization, has degenerated to balkanization of the body politic accompanied by balkanization of thought and national loyalty. The institution of election, supposed to convey popular will and enrich a melting unifying point of various interests, has degenerated into cockpits of domino manouvres among godfathers of political parties and self-perpetuating regimes. Communication gaps between groups and classes have continued to wide. After 50 years of self-rule, topics like revenue allocation and derivation principles remain vexatious issues, and the basis of the federation is still open to debate though calls for a conference of ethnic groups.

          Clear answers to these challenges from distinctly different ideological perspectives are over-due. What is the most appropriate Federal device to manage the primordial divides of our plural society in the direction of national integration? Any positive lesson from similar phases of political development (USA in 1900 to 2090, USSR in 1921-1985, Ataturk’s Turkey in 1924 to 1938, the nationalist ideology of Baath Party in the Middle East or even the populist politics of Philippines and Thailand).  In quality of governance, Chapter 2 of the 1999 constitution offers a rich mine of ideas to an ideologically oriented party. On the sense of corporate self-worth of Nigerian State, the fact of our existence as the largest black country in Africa and the world offers to an ideologically-driven political party materials for reconstruction of our manifest destiny in both the continent and in the world.

          If the opportunities offered by the various problems of national integration are taken seriously by any ideologically conscious political party which is determined to make a change and which has staying stamina for a prolonged campaign, the question of Nigeria’s national unity will begin to yield to positive and enduring answers. Admittedly, much has been done through the pragmatism of non-doctrinaire political parties, compelled by military fiats, mandatory regulations and exigencies of electoral competition. But much more can be done because, more than all institutions of mass politics, political parties are the main governance vehicle which constitutes the junction, the meeting point, between theory and practice. If ideologically directed, they should be more effective catalysts of social change.

3.iv.   Handicaps

We most however admit that there are difficulties on the way of political parties determined to tackle these challenges.

3.iv.a.                   The first problem is the tradition of Federal government sponsorship of a political party which quickly attracts to its side a massive alignment of most political actors pursuing their self-interests. The centre-favoured political party soon balloons into the majority mainstream party peopled by the broad elite spectrum of ideological strange bed-fellows. This is the lineage of political establishment that has since independence provided a formidable and seemingly impregnable phalanx, and appropriating all state power to perpetuate its dominance. The formation has remained more or less unbroken through all permutations, military or civilian. The boundary between the establishment political party as a technically independent institution and the State is now blurrred. In civilian rule, it has transmuted from NPC, through NPN, SDP, and  NRC to PDP. All efforts to network an effective opposition to this phalanx has failed, partly through the ideological incoherence of the opposing political actors and partly through the intolerance and self-perpetuation drive of the incumbent government-sponsored parties. The current somersaults over electoral reforms and the incumbent regime’s defence of its executive powers to appoint Chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) assures the continuity of centre-sponsored national party, positioned beyond the uncertainties of  free election and the hazards of  political party competition. The new trend of carpet-crossing of elected state chief executives from the parties with mandated them to rule with specific manifestoes to the ruling federal behemoth foreshadows the arrival of a dusk of right-wing one-party state in Nigeria.

History of governance in Nigeria is an unrelieved tale of little respect for democratic culture. It is a totalitarian convention in which governments obey the letters, not the spirit of the laws. Governments try in various ways to control all instruments of rule from monopoly of the resources of state, through partisan use of coercive forces, to attempts to compromise the judiciary and any other centres of independent initiative. The political field does mount formidable obstacles to opposition parties, especially those which are genuine instruments of change. Many of the parties have their backs pushed to the wall for survival. (Survival necessity explains in part the participation of NEPU in the Federal government coalition of the First Republic in which its ally, NCNC, joined the NPC-controlled centre).

          Because of the weakness and delinquency of the State as a neutral umpire, all political parties outside the sponsored choice are orphaned parties. They are denied freedom of expression and activities normally available to all political actors in a democracy.  But to overcome such government-created obstacles ought be seen by ideologically committed parties as a part of the challenge to the realization of the set goal of changing an existing system.

3.iv.b.         The second problem is lack of funds.  This arises partly from the class character of membership of such parties (if they are leftist) and mainly from the ruling party’s policy of financial starvation of its opponents.  Even if the Constitution stipulates financial grants to political parties as 1999 Constitution does, a ruling party can frustrate the realization of the law’s intendment.

3.iv.c.                   More harmful to the virility of the political parties is their lack of internal democracy. The parties cannot convey to democracy the value which they have not got.  In varying degrees, all the parties ignore the tenets of democracy. Besides the internal struggle for supremacy among leading members, the problem is the prevalence of members’ habit of reflexive submission to the whims of acknowledged leader of a party. Whatever rights the party constitution has given to its members, and whatever functions and powers it has stipulated for its organs, members tend to regard the leader of the party as the embodiment of its rules. This attitude exists in all the parties, including NEPU and PRP. The impression in some quarters that Mallam was a dictator is not entirely true. Mallam was a democrat per excellence. But the fact is that the followers and the cadres insisted on using him, not the rules, as the final endorsement of their actions, inspite of his continual attempts to reject this role.

3.iv.d          The fourth problem is the blight of personality cult, probably the most deadly enemy of ideological parties.  Personality cult takes the place of ideology in the hearts of generality of members, thereby hindering and undermining adequate internalization of its values by members.  The structure of the party and state of discipline are among the early casualties.  As President Obasanjo promoted himself to a demi-god in PDP, though not an ideologically-driven party, it was an open secret that favoured sycophants were allotted states to select and deliver their choices as elected candidates.  The bye-products of personality cults are godfathers and patron saints.  In place of healthy doctrinal discourses, differences of opinion result in personality clashes among turf leaders.  Internal differences in Action Group when it veered towards an ideology degenerated to violent warfare between Chief Awolowo and Akintola groups.  In USSR, Stanlism initiated a terrible purge and execution of ideological opponents.  Also, by the collapse of USSR, it was an amazing discovery that the internalization of socialist values among members of the Communist Party was really low.  For PRP, it is not a flight of far-fetched imagination to project from certain indications (e.g the lifestyle of many of its members who found themselves in government for the first time) that a decline of NEPU-PRP legacy was about to set in real earnest from 1980.

3.iv.e.                    The second difficulty arises directly from the conservative and pragmatic temperament of market economy-based environment.  The unconducive features of the society include the prevalence of mercenary ethos, the practical anti-doctrinaire outlook partly inherited from British tradition of pragmatism and the current spirit of modernisation indices of market economy and public-private initiatives.   The psychological set-back inflicted by the collapse of the Soviet Union and dawn of Gorbachev’s Perestroika set a false signal of end of ideology and made the international environment even more unreceptive to radical thoughts and movements. 

Apart from NEPU, no radical party – Social Workers and Farmers Party (SWAFP), Zikist Movement, etc – survived beyond adolescence partly because of the inadequate response of an unappreciative environment. NEPU survived so long partly because of the depth of its ideological commitment and partly because it rooted its proselytizing language in the local idiom of a religiously fervent peasantry.

3.v.    PRP crisis

If its successor PRP was not as lucky, it was because of a combination of the factors outlined here. The PRP crisis remains a metaphor on the fate of an ideologically-driven party in Nigeria. The objective reality, defined by the boundaries of a fast growing capitalist social arrangement, confronted adherents with the strategic challenge of correctly interpreting the unfolding political situation. What followed were divergent interpretations of opportunities for strategic maneuvers. PRP, loyal to Mallam, saw a chance in exploiting the opportunity offered through constructive engagement with an NPN-controlled federal government in a national coalition at a period in which the fragile civilian regime seemed to risk premature collapse, with dire consequences to democracy. On the other hand, adherents who were opposed to this position insisted that alliance with political parties in opposition to the NPN-controlled centre would give more teeth to PRP’s radical barks against existing order, enrich its ideological profile, and most importantly, advance the nation’s political struggle. But, like in all fratricidal warfare, the bitter polemics of self-righteousness soon took over. The pro-Mallam group underrated the essence of doctrinal purity and the importance of adherence to it, while the anti-Mallam group betrayed inadequate appreciation of objective reality, as subsequent events soon proved, and, against the facts of history they even tried to devalue the pioneering role of Mallam Aminu Kano in formation of NEPU!

The problem of correct reading of the dynamics of political change, dispassionate use of the rudder of ideological perspective and ability to discern the relevance of short term or long term goals in a struggle remains a thorny task to the tactical ingenuity of the strategists of ideologically committed parties in Nigeria.

Conclusion

   The dire consequences of absence of parties with clear, strong ideological orientation continue to haunt the peace and future of Nigeria daily.  In material prosperity, the standard of living of her people is lower than it was fifty years ago.  Kleptocracy has conspired with incompetence to ensure that the decline proceeds unabated.  While other nations climb upwards to enter the ozone layer of the most economically advanced nations, Nigeria appears content to hold a world record in corruption and population explosion (By size of population, she is among the first 10, but by human development indices she is among the last poorest in the world).

     No political party has noticed that at birth Nigeria shared the same level of underdevelopment with Korea, Singapore and Indonesia but today the economic development of her Asian contemporaries is a century ahead of us.  No party has noticed the steep gradient of this decline because our political actors see their calling as grabbing their share of prepared pottage from the national pot.  As a political party is seen as nothing more than a meal ticket to the national vault by political party members, switches of party allegiance are as frequent as investors’ readings of the stock exchange market.  Even state governors are not exempted from the mealy-mouthed forays for greener pastures in the extensive diamonds field of ruling federal-government-sponsored party.  In the absence of democratic culture and its principled drivers, the political parties, a dispensation of high premium on money reigns.  The result is plutocracy – rule of the rich by the rich, for the rich and opposed by the rich excluded from the national loot.  To what extent the masses who cannot project their interests through these political parties can endure their inevitable alienation is beyond the scope of this brief lecture.

 I want to conclude this anniversary lecture with two questions.

What are the lessons from the history of NEPU-PRP to Nigerian political parties?

          What are the lessons of this legacy to Nigeria’s political future?

The lessons from NEPU/PRP legacy may be summarized in one phase – clarity of ideological focus and staying stamina of a fighting spirit.

          And the lessons of this legacy to our political parties? If a party seriously wants to change and improve the existing system, it must develop a clear ideological position. If the position is dispassionately developed, and passionately embraced, the party will ipso fact, muster the requisite strength that supplies it the staying power. It is the staying power that wins its battles– in one fell swoop or incrementally – in a long prolonged social war, even in the dark nights of apparent defeats. It is the ideological strength that will provide the party the shield and armour against the seductions of an increasingly philistine society and the wiles of an IMF-programmed capitalist dispensation. It is this depth of passionate commitment that will constantly remind such a party that the secret of an effective leadership of a leftist radical movement is integrity and extraordinary depth of the ideological commitment. Such a party must learn from the successes and failures of Mallam Aminu Kano, and the strategic gains and errors of NEPU and PRP. 

To continue to deny this country the stimulation of ideologically driven political parties is like denying the body of oxygen or a vehicle of a steering wheel.  The people of Nigeria cannot settle for the inertia and deadness of a mortuary.  Our youths must produce their Bikko’s and our leaders their Lee Kuan Yew’s.

Bibliography

1.       Building Party-Based Democracy In Nigeria: Dr. Tunji Olagunju, Paper presented at the National Seminar organized by PDP, Abuja May, 1990

2.       The Politics of Mallam Aminu Kano:  Alkasum Abba, Vanguard Printers and Publishers Ltd, 1993 Kaduna

3.       African Revolutionary: The Life and Times of Nigeria’s Aminu Kano, Feistein Alan. Triatlantic Books, New York 1998.

4.       The Ideology of Power and the Power of Ideology: Goran Therborn, 1981.

5.       Ideology and Political Life, Hoover K. R. 1986.

6.       The Third Wave: Democratization In the Late Twentieth Century, Samuel Huntington: University of Oklahoma Press, Norma 1993.

7.       Instability and Political Order: Politics and Crisis in Nigeria.  Patrick Wilmot, Ibadan University Press 1973.

8.       The Politics of Federalism In Nigeria, J Isawa Elaigwu Aba Publishing House Ltd. 2005

9.       Democratization of Disempowerment in Africa: Claude Ake Malthouse Press Ltd 1994.

10.     Governance And Politics In Nigeria: The IBB And OBJ Years: Ed. Sam Oyovbaire.

11.     The Tale of June 12: The Betrayal of The Democratic Rights of Nigerians (1993), Omo Omoruyi, Press Alliance Network Ltd London 1999.

12.     Seeing Double: Patrick Wilmot, St. Martin’s Press New York 2006.