By Mobolaji Sanusi
“Democracy is in my humble view the best form of government, and the rule of law man’s triumph against arbitrary use of power.”…..Chief Obafemi Awolowo (1909-1987).
Any country that is bereft of its history, anywhere, will unequivocably be consigned to losing a detailed knowledge of its socio-political cum cultural and traditional values. Until recently, Nigeria was at that crossroads where one man called Olusegun Obasanjo, for odious reasons of attempting to conceal his treacherous involvement in the June 12, 1993 annulment struggles amongst his other democratic abuses, abolished history as a subject in schools while serving as civilian president of Nigeria between 1999 and 2007.
Consequent upon Obasanjo’s parochial and presidential thoughtlessness, any Nigerian of around forty years of age, may not, except through self-efforts, have any thorough sense of history of what our late sage and political icon, Chief Jeremiah Obafemi Oyeniyi Awolowo, meant to our dear country. Awolowo, who died on May 9, 1987, remains the indisputable patriarch of progressive politics in Nigeria.
Awolowo never became president of this country during his lifetime, but his enduring legacies gave him the rare privilege of being posthumously described as the “best president Nigeria never had”—-apologies to the late Biafran warlord, Dim Odumegwu Ojukwu. Additionally, for as long as there’s a country called Nigeria, Awolowo will eternally be remembered as the foremost and formidably informed one-man political opposition that this potentially great country has ever produced.
In his lifetime, Awolowo, as an individual, was as formidable as his political parties that traversed the colonial era; including the First and Second Republics. During the first republic, his political party, the Action Group, AG, formed on March 21,1951, was as strong and formidable as his person. More importantly, the party was deeply ingrained in the hearts of his people and a torn in the flesh of then colonial and subsequent national central government.
As an effective opposition leader during that era, ignoring Awolowo was at the ruling government’s political peril. His imprisonment in the first republic signalled the nunc dimittis of that political era. That was how formidable the Awolowo opposition phenomenon was at that time.
Fast forward to the Second Republic. Awolowo contested under his progressively inclined Unity Party of Nigeria, UPN, but lost. Until the demise of that republic and beyond, Awolowo maintained a uniquely strong and effective opposition voice against mal-governance while his political party, the UPN, had the best and empirically attested political party manifesto/programme ever in the anal of Nigeria’s history.
It’s based on Awolowo’s political ideology of democratic welfarism that he patterned his Action Group party when he served as Premier of the Western Region in the fifties. Whether in the old western region, the current southwestern Nigeria or in the entire country, no Nigerian, educated or not, that is old enough, can deny the developmental cum progressive impacts of Awolowo which made his western region one to be emulated and envied by other parts of the country. His party’s successful implementation of amongst others; free education at all levels, free health services, full employment for all citizens, and integrated rural development made him an exception to the rule of leadership in the corruption infested politics of Nigeria. His party programmes remain till today what successive administrations in the country find too utopian to reenact.
Awolowo was imbued with a selfless oppositional prowess as well as a prophetic analytical intellect. In 1981, he wrote a letter to then President Shehu Shagari of the National Party of Nigeria, NPN. In the letter, he pointed out that the “ship of state is fast approaching a huge rock” and warned that without a change in direction, Nigeria would face “unspeakable disaster.”
His admonition was unheeded, and the catastrophic consequences of this, as they say, is history. No political party, not even in contemporary Nigeria, has been able to replicate Awolowo’s uniformed cardinal programme that illuminated the entire southwestern part of the country.
Months after despotic Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida cornered power through a military coup in August, 1985, the tyrant inaugurated a deceitful Political Bureau headed by Professor Samuel Cookey. The Bureau invited several notable Nigerians, including Awolowo, expectedly, at that time. But in his courageous letter of membership rejection of February 28, 1986, to Professor Cookey, Awolowo gave a prognosis of Babangida’s abracadabra when nobody did or even envisaged such deceitful machinations. He spoke truth to brutal military power to wit: “l do fervently and will continue to fervently pray that l may be proved wrong. For something within me tells me, loud and clear, that what we have embarked upon is a fruitless search…. At the end of the day, when we imagine that the new order is here, we would be terribly disappointed.”
Not many Nigerians took him serious at that time but the monstrously devastating end of that experience denied Nigeria the opportunity of reaping its best elections ever and gave birth to the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) group that threw up the likes of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, current president of Nigeria, amongst others that still used that platform to dominate the politics of this contemporary epoch.
No opposition figure in extant Nigeria has the selflessness of an Awolowo or his political ideological discipline. What we have now across existing political divides are greedy political harlots masquerading as people’s advocates. They pour panegyrics on ruling figures and government of the day for appointive/pecuniary opportunities and criticize, not for collective benefits, but out of malice and for personal enrichment.
Awolowo’s formidable political oppositional base is enduring. Loathe or detest him, his political intellect, principled character and unassailable discipline are incontestable. When Awolowo spoke, the government of that era shivered. He was the political cum moral leadership conscience of his epoch that is yet to be reproduced in present day Nigeria. Awolowo, on salient issues of his time, provided practicable alternate ideas devoid of the routine frivolous oppositional criticisms that are common practice in today’s Nigeria.
Unlike the selfless oppositional template of Awolowo, contemporary opposition dissipated enormous energy, resources and time in resolving avoidable internal party conflicts, leaving in its wake, no ample time for any constructive checks on the government of the day.
Examples of divisions and avaricious battles for power that are detrimental to the attainment of meaningful opposition abound in existing political parties in the country. The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP; the African Democratic Congress, ADC; the Labour Party, LP, and the New Nigerian People’s Party, NNPP, amongst others are presently in avoidable political turmoil emanating from their leaders’ greed for power and unquenchable thirst for pecuniary acquisition and opportunities from the reigning government that they publicly criticize as not good enough for the country.
Unlike Awolowo, the leadership of these opposition parties have no practicable alternate ideas or visions to move the country out of its criticized cul de sac. The leadership of these political parties lack the requisite credibility and most times, the credentials to convince the largely frustrated voters of this country to choose them as desirable replacements for the government of the day.
Is it Atiku Abubakar or Peter Obi who, in defiance of any known ideology, have crisscrossed political parties in their inordinate ambition to rule over this country? Could it be Rabiu Kwankwaso or any of those former this, or former that, that are now aspiring to contest for the 2027 presidency without any established principle, convincing alternate policies or programmes to counter that of their roundly criticized template of the sitting government. Many also argued that the present administration has not acquitted itself well enough. This position may not be incorrect but what practical alternatives do Nigerians have in view of the existing tepidly malicious opposition leaders whose only focus is cornering of the number one seat without giving a hoot to the overall wellbeing of Nigerians. The way to go is to try to understand that there is no way to moving from frying pan to fire for our people.
The opposition in Nigeria is fragmented with no clear or unified direction. In this shambolic state, they still nurse the illusion of seizing power without a coherent or alternative vision for governance. Where’s the desired strategic direction and not the currently weak and uncoordinated front by the country’s opposition?
Can the current opposition compel effective accountability from the ruling party/government when they lack ideological clarity. They are more clandestinely interested in bringing about effortless alignment with the ruling party rather than strengthening their oppositional foundation. Virtually all notable opposition leaders in the country at the moment have defected to the ruling party in their routine political tradition. No wonder that the opposition always struggle to create a niche in the electoral turfs due to their lack of sincerity of purpose; and an absence of compelling clear message differentials from the ones created by the political status quo ante that they aspire to surplant.
The search for an ‘Awolowo’ in today’s opposition continues and will continue in as much as bread and butter politics is placed above selfless leadership and efficacious governance style. The political opposition in this country as currently structured is not one that can compel any sitting government to embrace policies and practices that can effectively mitigate or bring an absolute end to the acknowledged suffering of our people.
As the replication of an ideal opposition ‘Awolowo’ in today’s politics remain a mirage, the present day political opposition must see this piece as a challenge for them to change their condemnable ways of crass opportunism.
• Sanusi, former MD/CEO of Lagos State Signage & Advertisement Agency, is currently managing partner at AMS RELIABLE SOLICITORS. (sms/whatsapp-07011117777)
