Maurice Chukwu
I always catch myself drawing an analogy between Nigeria’s opposition parties’ incapability to offer a strong opposition to the President Jonathan-led Peoples Democratic Party, PDP administration and the rivalry that subsists between two English football clubs, Manchester United and Manchester City, both based in Manchester, England. While United strengthens their team every year with quality players, and wins virtually every major trophy they compete for, their neighbours, City go about rhapsodising yearly in the rapturous slumber and inertia of wrestling power from United. For over forty-five years, they played second fiddle to United, not winning any single trophy and, in the process, earning themselves the loathsome sobriquet ‘the noisy neighbours’. Manchester United’s former boss Sir Ferguson coined the infamous phrase as a way of belittling City's ambition to challenge United after decades spent living in the shadow of their more illustrious cross-town rivals. City was content with name calling and brick bats, always loudly reminding United that they (City) are the real Manchester team. This is because their Stadium is situated in the middle of the town while United’s is actually at the outskirts!
Just
like City, are the opposition parties in Nigeria mere ‘noisy neighbours’ of the
ruling PDP? Have they exhibited the perspicacity needed to keep the Jonathan
administration on its toes? Let’s find out.
For
democracy to thrive in any clime, the role of the opposition cannot be over
emphasised. Every major policy and/or decision of the ruling party deemed not
to be apposite with the expectation of the opposition (and, in most case, the
masses) ought to be challenged or rivalled with a superior policy plan or a
better alternative. If the ruling party presents or sponsors an unpopular bill
or policy plan to the legislature, each opposition party ought to take an
official position and vote against such unpopular policy through their members
in the legislature.
In
advanced and progressive democracies, the opposition do not defeat or frustrate
unpopular bills and policies through hauling of innuendoes and nuances,
name-calling and hurriedly-written press statements from the parties’ National
Publicity Secretaries and/or National Leaders (or any other designation or
appellation that our politicians go by these days. Oh, how we love titles!). I
am now reluctant to read any statement(s) beginning or purporting to begin
thus: “The ABC party hereby announces,
proclaims and declares that it totally and absolutely rejects and condemns the
draconian decision of the clueless and oppressive ruling PDP to…Signed:
National Publicity Secretary”. These press statements do not, in almost all
cases, contain a superior alternative to the policy being condemned.
Perhaps,
recourse to the role the Republican Party opposition has played since the
inception of the Barack Obama-led Democratic Party government in the U.S. would
be apt here.
For
every policy of the Democrats that the opposition Republicans disagrees with,
they so disagree with sound arguments and publish what they perceive as the
best alternative to such policy and/or bill. This would be the official
position of the party on such an issue. Republican members in the House of
Representatives and the Senate then argue logically and vigorously on the
consensus position of their party. An example would suffice.
Following
the gruesome December, 2012 gun attack in a Newtown, Connecticut school which
led to the death of twenty first-graders and five educators, President Barack
Obama and the Democratic leaders proposed and submitted to the U.S. Senate a
compromise plan to expand background checks on firearms sales as well as a
proposal to ban some semi-automatic weapons modelled after military assault
weapons. However, fierce opposition by conservative Republicans
from pro-gun states, who insisted on right to obtain and
store ammunition without registration, doomed key proposals in the gun
package. The bill was eventually defeated on Wednesday April 18, 2013 in the
U.S. Senate. Meanwhile, an alternative package of gun proposal was immediately
proposed by conservative Republicans. According to The New York Times, that evening, President Obama convened his top
aides in the Oval Office and weighed whether he should make a big push on new
gun control laws, even though he had planned to start the second term focused
on new immigration laws. He realised that he had to do more in the face of
strong opposition.
The
above, in my opinion, is what opposition is meant to achieve. A strong and
credible opposition puts the ruling party on its toes thereby strengthening
democratic ethos.
It is
no longer news that on the of 13th
of May, 2013 President Jonathan
declared emergency rule in the three troubled Northern Sates of Borno, Yobe and
Adamawa due to ‘‘the activities of insurgents and terrorists (who) have
attacked government buildings and facilities…have murdered innocent citizens
and state officials…have set houses ablaze, and taken women and children as
hostages… have destroyed the Nigerian flag and other symbols of state authority
and in their place, hoisted strange flags suggesting the exercise of
alternative sovereignty… actions (which) amount to a declaration of war and a
deliberate attempt to undermine the authority of the Nigerian state and
threaten her territorial integrity...’’.
However,
what was and is still news to me, is that three days after the President’s
declaration, the most vocal opposition party in the country released a
statement rejecting the imposition of emergency rule, describing same as ‘a
sweetened bitter pill meant to hoodwink Nigerians’. The said party’s
alternative solution to the threat posed to the nation by terrorists is that
‘the use of minimal force complemented with genuine dialogue in the short term,
while in the long term good governance that delivers the dividends of
democracy, including jobs for the teeming unemployed youths, will help deny
terrorists the fertile ground for recruiting ready hands to perpetrate
violence’. The said party then called on the National Assembly not to sanction
the emergency rule.
Pray,
did the opposition party not listen to the President’s speech? I still recall
the President maintaining in the
nationwide address that all efforts at resolving the terror attacks ‘through
actions which included persuasion, dialogue and widespread consultation with
the political, religious and community leaders in the affected states’ failed
to ‘stop the repeated cases of mindless violence’. So what new and better
alternative have the opposition presented as a panacea to terrorism? What were
the official positions of the opposition parties on the proclamation before and
after their National Publicity Secretaries issued statements condemning same?
Now, wait for the shocker - a few days later,all the hundred Senators present
and voting (including those from the opposition parties) unanimously sanctioned
the proclamation. Slapdash! Somebody please tell the opposition to remove the
statements condemning emergency rule from their websites as their members in
the legislature think otherwise.
It
suffices to state that it is not every policy of the administration that the
opposition should disagree with. For instance, sound government policies
involving sensitive issues as security and the war on terrorism ought to be
supported by the opposition. In the U.S, despite their ideological differences,
both Republicans and Democratsagree that: ‘there is no negotiation with
terrorists. No form of therapy or coercion will turn them from their murderous
ways. Only total and complete destruction of terrorism will allow freedom to
flourish’. This is patriotism, not politics. This is how it ought to be in
Nigeria.
The
ruling party has certainly not done enough. Nigeria deserves a credible
opposition to check the actions and inactions of the Jonathan administration.
An opposition that would present Nigeria with a better alternative on real
issues such as health care, immigration, international trade, infrastructure,
power, labour, job creation, terrorism, military, war and veterans, social
security, women and children, guns etc., as opposed to fanciful catch-phrases
and name-callings like the ‘drunken
fisherman whose boat is about to capsize’ mantra.
Back
to the two Manchester clubs, the Democrats and the Republicans, Nigeria’s
ruling and opposition parties, and all that.
Of
late however, City woke from their slumber, got foreign investors and
strengthened their squad. Over the last
three years, they have won three trophies, mostly at the expense of United.
Suddenly, United realises that to remain the super power of Manchester, they
had to be on their toes. And, to borrow the favourite phrase of the Nigerian
Football Federation, they went ‘back to the drawing board’, re-strengthened,
re-strategized and successfully wrestled the trophy back from their hitherto
‘noisy’ (but now competitive) neighbours.
Like
the rejuvenated City and the startled United of England, like the Democratic
Party and the Republican Party of the United States. I wish one could also add,
like the PDP and the ACN (including the ANPP, the APGA, and the CPC, pardon, I
almost forgot, the APC) of Nigeria, but in all sincerity, one cannot. The
reason is not far-fetched. Manchester City realised their docility and desisted
from name-calling, and were able to mount a successful challenge to United. Ditto
the Democratic and Republican Parties.With respects, same cannot be said of the
opposition parties in Nigeria who areonly adept at attacking the (often
unexceptional) policies of the present administration with feathery verbal
pugilisms without proposing better alternatives. In my assessment, the
opposition have, at best, remained the ruling party’s ‘noisy neighbours’
*Maurice Chukwu, legal practitioner, Dr
OluOnagoruwa Chambers, 77 Olonode Street, Alagomeji, Yaba, Lagos.mauricechukwu@gmail.com,
08032332734