In African countries transiting from colonial rule to full political modernity, regime change involving a switch from ruling party to the opposition was until recent the exception rather than the rule. In many of these countries, transformation often takes place within the context of power changing hands between different factions of the same ruling party and between one generation of rulers and the other without the prospects of inter-party transition.
In Nigeria’s fifty fear years of post-independence, this is the first time the nation will be witnessing an inter-party regime change. As Nigerians saw during the regime switch over from Umaru Yar’Adua to Goodluck Jonathan, even regime change between different factions of the same political group can be quite a tense and stressful affair, sometimes taking the nation to the edge of disaster. In the case of an inter-party change over such as we are currently witnessing, things can become very turbulent and tumultuous indeed.
Rather than this being viewed with sorrow, despair and a generous dose of Afro-pessimism, it should be viewed from the perspective of a longer span of history and of societies in a state of traumatic transition from traditional authoritarian modes to some form of political modernity. In this respect, African countries have done quite well.
While there have been inter-party transition in several African countries, notably South Africa, Zambia,Senagal, Botswana, Malawi, Ghana, Benin Republic, in some other African countries, particularly in the West African sub-continent, military interventions have been swiftly terminated in favour of multi-party civil rule by a combination of local and international agencies. The recent experience of Mali, Guinea and Ivory Coast comes to mind.
As the long period of power transfer finally enters its final four weeks in Nigeria, there have been some fearful hiccups and intrigue-soaked dramas playing out even as they cast a dark shadow over the smooth and seamless transfer of power from one state party to the other. After such a bitter, hate-suffused campaign and the subsequent ouster of a ruling party long accustomed to power, only a political innocentwould expect the ruling party to depart quietly and without some rancorous fuss.
Not unexpectedly therefore, the mood of cheery optimism which accompanied President Jonathan’s graceful concession of defeat has given way to grim and often brutal political calculations and unseemly wrangling as the reality of drastic recomposition of state personnel and the termination of tenancy gradually sinks in. Since this is the first time this momentous and epochal transfer of power is taking place in Nigeria’s history, nobody has a road map or a compass to navigate the turbulent waters and the rude currents.
Yet it is imperative for the political class to find within itself the inner strength and resolve to make sure that nothing untoward happens between now and the May 29th handover date. Perhaps the lay over or interregnum itself is too long which makes power transfer very vulnerable to anti-democratic forces which abound in the Nigerian political society. In the nearest future, we may have to take another look at the constitution and our foolish fondness for American presidential rituals which sits oddly with the imperative of an authoritarian state and society yet to naturalize and domesticate the essence of western liberal democracy.
In parliamentary-type democracies, the winner takes over immediately. Such is the haste that in Great Britain, which is the global exemplar of this type of liberal democracy, the victor often arrives at Ten Downing Street beaming triumphant smiles while the loser sneaks out through the backdoor. On May 2nd 1997 and hours after losing the general election, John Major was sighted at his favourite Oval Cricket grounds spotting dark goggles as he lapped at a pint of warm beer. Life resurrects after political death.
In our own case, both the president elect and the president deposed are consigned to a whopping eight weeks in political limbo; a warehouse for political mischief and incalculable villainy. It doesn’t get more disruptive and destabilizing. With Goodluck Jonathan rightly insisting that he is in charge till the very last second even as he is busy hiring and firing left, right and centre while General Mohammadu Buhari is also busy making ex-cathedra pronouncements about a presidency yet to mature, may God help us all.
The deck is being loaded with the administrative, economic and human debris of the old order. General Buhari may have to spend valuable weeks and even months clearing institutional impedimenta. We must find a creative hybrid between the American and British models which fits perfectly the reality of our situation and circumstances.
It is important for us as Nigerians to get this vital transition right. Institutions are nothing but the herculean efforts of human beings which involve repeated gestures and rituals burnt into the human consciousness. They then become invaluable pathfinders acting with impersonal rigour and abstract impartiality.
Even though this is the first time in the history of the country that we are having a power transfer from an ousted ruling party to the opposition, all those who wish Nigeria well above partisan politics, all those who believe in the manifest destiny of this gifted country as a potential haven for the Black soul must wish that it happens ever so often so as to teach political parties who abjure their covenant with the people a memorable and unforgettable lesson. This country will never be the same again.
Except in the post-revolutionary momentum of a popular uprising, it is rare in Africa to find a ruling party that has held power for sixteen years being so comprehensively trounced at the polls by an opposition party that is barely two years old. What this means in political seismography is that the earthquake which brought the ruling party to grand ruination is merely dormant and may yet erupt again. Beyond the surface placidity, one can almost feel the frightening tremors.
The ouster of the PDP is not the end of a process but the beginning of a working out of national contradictions which may eventuate in the birth of a totally new Nigeria or the dramatic dissolution of its present iron format. As a group, the Nigerian political elite have been too preoccupied with ephemeralities to see the latent manifestation beyond the surface pathologies. This is more than mere electoral victory or loss of power. Something else is brewing somewhere. The contents and sum total of the country in all their roiling contradictions appear to have outstripped the current form and framework.
As it is natural in the circumstances, the PDP is in a state of denial. When its obtuse diehards talk of reorganizing the party and repositioning it for power retrieval, just what do they mean? Do they really know what has hit them? In order to even broach the possibility of survival the party must be completely reinvented and must come up with a totally new paradigm of service to the people. As it is at the moment, the party is a political brand soiled beyond soap and water.
As a party, the PDP was meant for another epoch. That era has given way before our very eyes. The PDP was conceived as a party of big men and pan-Nigerian powerbrokers who exercised a veto power over their subjects in what is supposed to be a modern nation-state. But when a nation in itself is driven by power hubris to become a nation for itself, the very notion of big man enters into a fatal contradiction with people’s power. All the remaining party big wigs have to do is to take a casual or casualty roll call of its big men that fell in the last election. The political graveyard is filled with the bones of big men.
As for the victorious APC, it seems that it also too preoccupied with new found spoils of office to do a reality check. What brought the APC to power is not an endorsement of its platform but a rejection of the platform of the PDP. Anything but the PDP was the national battle cry. It all boils down to what we propose as the politics of negative memory. In order to cultivate and gain the positive affection of the Nigerian electorate, the APC must put its strategic wits to work so as to come up with a far reaching charter with the Nigerian people and a comprehensive blueprint for transforming it into an organic and cohesive organ.
If the APC is not to suffer the same fate as the PDP, it is in the interest of the party and the nation that has given it so much to demonstrate how and why it is different from the PDP. The current unseemly and unsightly scrambling and jostling for office and position do not portray it as a party different in quality and orientation from the PDP. The APC must remember the fate of the incongruous coalition which unseated the ancien regime in Kenya and brought Mwai Kibaki to power.
Four years in power and as election loomed, the alliance disintegrated into its component parts and ethnic particularities. The result was a brief civil war from which Kenya is yet to recover. For starters, both parties must refrain from acts capable of jeopardizing the national date with destiny on May 29th or conduct themselves in a manner that can endanger the historic victory of the Nigerian people over authoritarian misrule.
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