Japheth Omojuwa: The Nigerian opposition and the quest for Nigeria’s alternative (YNaija Frontpage)

Nothing is to say the coming together of the parties will guarantee them a win against the PDP in 2015 but that is a prerequisite for a chance of that happening. Let me state here that, this is not about the PDP or the opposition as political parties, this is about Nigeria’s democracy.

By the time President Barack Obama is through with his second term in office in 2016, Democrats would have had 28 years of American leadership, same as Republicans over the preceding 56 year period. However you see it, something is clear, Americans have equally switched from the left to the right and where they are not exactly sure, they decide for candidates that at least show they are in their own rights leaders and not just party ball boys.

Nigeria’s civil rule has been a different story. The People’s Democratic People – an ironical name for a party that has plunged more Nigerians into poverty than at anytime in Nigeria’s history – has been in power for the past 13 years and is guaranteed to have same till 2015 barring any democratic mishap. Even if the party had done really well since 1999, trust the citizenry to think they could try out a new alternative to see if they could get a better deal from governance. In the case of the PDP though, even their best allies and serving political office holders agree they have failed the nation. To say they have failed is to put it mildly, because the PDP era in Nigerian leadership has essentially been a disaster.

Sadly for Nigerians, the opposition is not exactly different. If they were, they would have kept aside their ego and individual obsession with power to help create a genuine alternative for the people of Nigeria. This has not been the case because unlike the PDP that has been able to align the interests of those hellbent on milking the nation dry and an one or two outliers in their midst of vampires, the other political parties have been just fine with doing virtually the same thing at their regional levels.

The Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) has pretended to be a major alternative but it has only been best at pretending. The Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) has refused to grow out of Gen. Buhari’s apron strings. There is the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) that is more often than not a subsidiary of the People’s Democratic Party. Labour Party has no life outside of Ondo. The All Nigerian People’s Party (ANPP) though one of the oldest parties in this democratic dispensation has been at best a shadow of its old promises. If these political parties cannot defy the old order or selfishness and na-me-get-am attitude by coming together to form an alliance for a much needed alternative to what is the PDP’s snail speed forward and light speed backward of moving Nigeria, we’d be doomed by 2020.

Nothing is to say the coming together of the parties will guarantee them a win against the PDP in 2015 but that is a prerequisite for a chance of that happening. Let me state here that, this is not about the PDP or the opposition as political parties, this is about Nigeria’s democracy. Until a different political party takes the helm at the centre, this democracy would be nothing but “Jan glover, epo motor” a game kids play that makes them look like they are moving at a very fast speed but in totality are not moving at all. Our oscillatory movement cannot take us forward and there’d be no going forward until the opposition re-write our history and sweep the PDP out. Will they be better than the PDP? I don’t know. Will they be worse than the PDP? Can anything be worse than the poverty and failure reality the PDP has unleashed on Nigeria?

If you are homeless, naked and hungry and you have a chance to move from where you are? Would you think about your chances elsewhere before moving or you’d move knowing that you cannot have it worse than being a destitute on one spot? Nigeria needs change and if in the midst of general poverty – over 112 million poor people – our current PDP led government claims our lives are being transformed, you need no one to tell you that if we don’t do away with these scammers, our children will be scammed too when the future comes. We don’t want that to happen do we?

 

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.

 

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