PDP: An opposition party absent from duty? By Ayo Olukotun

“The reading of history proves that freedom always dies when criticism dies” —John Diefenbaker

If as one often hears these days, the All Progressives Congress was ill-prepared for governmental power at the centre, then the Peoples Democratic Party was even worse prepared to play the role of an opposition party. Obviously, for our struggling democracy to thrive, there is a need for a government with developmental forte in a hurry to achieve, as well as a strong opposition party increasingly wearing the look of government in waiting.

It was a good thing that the PDP leaders from the South-West gathered in Akure on Wednesday to position the zone for contesting the chairmanship of the party, setting aside differences and costly ego games that would have denied them a fighting chance. Noteworthy too is the fact that a bigwig like a former Jigawa State Governor, Sule Lamido, indicated a fortnight ago that he would contest the presidency in 2019, on the platform of the PDP. Hence, a party which spent a whole year mourning its loss for the first time in 16 years of the presidency is now warming up for a possible comeback.

Lamido, while announcing his decision to run for the presidency, told reporters that: “As I am talking to you now, we are working silently to resolve our differences and bring back to our fold those that left the party.” The statement signals that the PDP which a few months ago looked hopelessly discredited and severely morally challenged is reengineering in order to bounce back.

There is a problem however. As a former Canadian Prime Minister, John Diefenbaker, quoted in the opening section informed, one of the greatest assets of a democracy is the presence of an opposition party that keeps governments on their toes through criticisms of their programmes, policies, pace and perspectives. Where such criticisms are lacking or in short supply, society may regress into authoritarianism. In this respect, the PDP thus far can be regarded as absent or at least ineffective in its principal duty of keeping a vigil on government, an assignment brilliantly performed by its main rival, the APC, when it was in opposition.

To be sure, there are still a few voices from the party speaking out now and then offering alternative perspectives. There is no evidence however that they are speaking on the behalf of the party which would have lent more weight to what in effect are their personal opinions. Their criticisms of the Buhari government therefore cannot be taken as the opinion of the party. It is true also that the National Publicity Secretary of the party, Chief Olisa Metuh, before his arrest in connection with the Dasukigate provided perspectives on Buhari’s policies and actions. After his arrest however, the party literally went to sleep instead of picking up the gauntlet on topical issues. If the PDP was better prepared for opposition, the arrest of its spokesperson and the projected arrest of former aviation minister, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, who reportedly has gone underground in connection with an alleged N2.5bn fraud ought not to have so easily reduced the party to incoherence or near silence.

The retreat of the party with respect to the principal roles of intellectual combatant and treasury of alternative governance ideas has come at a time when the nation is in dire need of imaginative options. The elusive arithmetic of petroleum subsidy, the hangover of sensational fuel queues in major cities, growing insecurity which has lately collated around rampaging Fulani herdsmen, a rapidly weakening national currency, runaway inflation and the persisting problems associated with diminishing power generation are symptomatic of current malaise. As Rotimi John recently lamented, it would have been spot on for our currently slumbering civil society organisations to voice critiques and insightful reflections on urgent national problems at a time like this. (The Guardian, May 3, 2015)

The same argument can be made for the major opposition party whose main brief is to provide an opposing platform to policies which even if they are sound are certainly lacking in implementation vigour. It can be argued that the huge moral deficits of the PDP, some of which have come to light in recent times, pre-empt if not subvert the role of a crusading opposition party more so that its leading lights have been mentioned in ongoing cases regarding monumental diversion of funds. That problem ought not to have been insurmountable however if the party is willing and capable of carrying out an overhaul of substance, style and representation which would at least symbolically distance it from the tsunami which engulfed it.

In the run-up to the 2015 elections and amidst the turmoil that gripped the party, this columnist suggested that former President Goodluck Jonathan should rejuvenate the party by sacrificing his presidential ambition and possibly anoint a successor whose candidacy might not have been an issue and who was less associated with the party’s underbelly of prodigal spending. Of course, that advice was not heeded with consequences that are too well-known to need recapitulation. To return to the main point of this intervention, the PDP can only occupy the high ground in public discourse and fulfil its oppositional mandate thereby looking like an alternative government if it distances itself from the moral wreckage of its recent history by playing up a cleaner set.

Although true, it is not enough to argue that corruption is endemic in Nigerian politics and that no party is immune to its baleful influences. The point is that the APC has at least rhetorically and to an extent substantively raised the bar through the current reformist even if skewed initiatives of the Buhari administration.  Informed and critical opposition must respond to that fact and perhaps begin by apologising to the nation for the insensitive postures of the past. Only then can it begin to intelligently interrogate the failures of its principal rival and to show Nigerians how it intends to make a difference.

Yet another kind of re-organisation is necessary for the party to rediscover its oppositional mandate, namely: the need to root itself in an ideological garb. For reasons that I cannot elaborate within the space provided in this write-up, conservatism has become in popular discourse a term of abuse often pitted against the so-called progressivism defined monstrously as anyone belonging to a party outside of the PDP. For the same reason, a term like progressive conservatism associated with the British Prime Minister David Cameron and with the major conservative party in Canada does not exist in the very limited thesaurus of political discourse in this country even though some office holders in the PDP have demonstrated what can be called progressive tendencies. Part of the burden of the projected articulate PDP is to reframe public debate, unbundling it from the tyranny of propaganda and what Americans will term “the 30 second overgeneralisation”.

In sum, it is not enough for the PDP to reorganise itself in readiness for 2019. What is required of it for now is to play the role of an effective opposition party representing itself morally and ideologically by providing much needed alternatives to the inadequacies of the current dispensation