Madeleine Albright was an American diplomat and political scientist who served as the 64th United States Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 2001. She was the first woman to hold the position. During her visit to North Korea, the North Korean dictator assembled more than 200,000 North Koreans to entertain his visitor. They all had a particular time that all of them stood up and clapped for her in the same manner and at the same time in a highly choreographed fashion. She came back to United States and declared that it’s only in a dictatorship that more than 200,000 will be assembled to clap for visitors in the same manner over a period of time. She understood that the citizens had to be zombies to be able to do that.
Contrasting it with her country, the United States of America, she understood that even when her President visited any place, some citizens may be protesting in front of the President, and the State would use its apparatus to defend the citizen’s right to protest. This attitude was made possible by the presence of multi-party political system where the opposition parties defend the rights of the oppressed people as a strategy to inspire them to support the opposition in the next election. It’s this inherent healthy rivalry between the political parties that makes every incumbent government to be on its toes, to ensure delivery of democracy dividends to its people. From being a colonized people, like any other African country, the United States of America became the most powerful nation on earth because of the rapid development inherent in a multi-party system based on free, fair, credible elections.
North Korea with their one party state is one of the poorest nations on earth. No guarantee of life, liberty, or happiness. They are so enslaved that whenever their leader dies, the citizens will be brought out to choreograph and synchronise their cries and tears to form a symphony of sound. It’s that bad. In a one-party state, the resultant dictators are always more autocratic than the kings. They are the all-in-all. One-party system of government is a euphemism to crown one leader for life. Even if there are term limits initially, any brutal leader amongst them will simply amend the Constitution and remove term limits from the Constitution. It was the multi-party system of government that saved Nigeria from the issue of Third Term agenda which arose during the twilight days of the Olusegun Obasanjo’s administrtion.
In Nigeria, since independence, the citizens were born into a multi-party system of parliamentary democracy. The rude intrusion of the military confined the polity to a dictatorship. It was dangerous to confront the military with its awesome powers, yet Nigerians did confront them and demanded a return to multi-party democracy. Indeed, it was the reneging of General Gowon from his promise to hand over power to a mult–party democratically elected government in 1975 that contributed to his ouster in 1975. Gowon shifted the handover date from 1975 to 1979 and was booted out by his colleagues in the military. This shows that even the military does not cherish an indefinite period of military dictatorship. This system is almost the same with the one-party democratic system that officially and legally outlaws competitive politics as is practised in North Korea.
Reclining on this background, one immediately understands that when the All Progressives Congress (APC) was believed to be heading towards one-party state that it was a mere ruse, not obtainable in the Nigerian political system. The former National Chairman of the APC, Abdullahi Ganduje, declared that there is nothing wrong in Nigeria being a one-party state, and asserted that the APC was willing and capable of integrating all defectors into its ranks. He even referenced China as a one-party state that is doing very well.
He immediately received attacks from all flanks including from the members of his party. He was reminded that though China is a one-party state, the country executes its corrupt citizens no matter how highly placed they are. Ganduje never really recovered from that utterance as his political career was executed by President Bola Tinubu, who booted him out of being the APC National Chairman. He immediately contracted “political illness” and used the excuse to run into hiding. I have no doubt in my mind that in his mind, he must have recanted his preference for one-party system, because it’s a system that will prevent him from taking his revenge on the government that put him to an open shame. It appears that even God does not prefer a one-party state for Nigeria.
The peculiarities of Nigeria as a country may be one of the factors that make the one-party system of government an irritant to the Nigerian people. Principal among which is our diversity. Nigeria is one of the most ethnically and linguistically diverse countries in the world. It has over 370 ethnic groups. Some sources even estimate up to 400. The three largest and most prominent ethnic groups are: Hausa-Fulani (mainly in the North), Igbo (mainly in the South-East) and Yoruba (mainly in the South-West). Other significant ethnic groups include: Ijaw, Kanuri, Ibibio, Tiv, Nupe, Gwari, Efik, Urhobo, Itsekiri, Jukun, Idoma, and many others. Nigeria is home to over 500 languages, three major religions, and some minor ones. Even within each religion there are thousands of sects and denominations.
There’s no way a citizen from any tribe or linguistic extraction, or a particular religion can lord it over about 370 other tribes and linguistic extraction, or religious background. It always backfires, leading to the revolt of other sectional, linguistic, or religious groups. The civil war was fought in Nigeria because of the fear of domination of one tribe over the others. One-party system of government which does not tolerate divergent views, opinions, and which is no respecter of our fundamental human rights, especially that of freedom of association and assembly would be impossible to practice in Nigeria.
In our Constitution, although multi-party system of government is guaranteed, efforts were still made to ensure that no sectional, ethnic, or religious group dominates the others. This reflects a preference for our diversity and accommodation of multi-party system over a one-party system. The constitutional requirement that every President must appoint a minister from every state, irrespective of the fact that he won the state or not or that his political party exists at all in the State or not, reflects our spirit of pluralism, accommodation, and inclusion, rather than exclusion, and attrition.
It’s obvious that the speculation about APC transforming Nigeria into a one-party state stemmed from the massive sycophantic endorsement of Tinubu for second term by some uninformed APC members and desperate followers and the cowardly defection of some PDP and Labour Party governors as well as members of the legislature to the incompetent and corrupt APC.
It’s important to note that these endorsements are predominantly done by APC members and this does not affect the capacity of other parties. It’s also important to realise that even if many politicians move into the ruling party, the chances of implosion become real. The implosion will create more parties which will in effect destroy the possibility of one-party state.
The People Democratic Party imploded at the height of its power in 2014 preparatory to the 2015 general elections. The main problem then was not about the security and welfare of the Nigerian people but to where the President should be zoned to. The New Peoples Democratic Party (NPDP) became a splinter group from the PDP that joined the APC to defeat the PDP. In 2007, when Atiku Abubakar was prevented from contesting the post of the President under PDP because of his principled stand against the Third Term agenda, he left the PDP and formed the Action Congress (AC) with Tinubu thereby creating another platform and avoiding possibility of a one-party state.
Any intelligent ruling party that wants peace among its fold in order to forestall implosion should avoid trying to impede internal democracy amongst its fold. It must encourage free and robust participatory dialogue amongst the members. It must avoid imposition of leaders on the party. It must obey its party Constitution and evolve a strict disciplinary code that will discipline its erring members to ensure deterrence to others.
When APC ignorantly started creating problems in the other political parties using its cronies and INEC, their intention was to foist a fait accompli on the other political parties and ensure that they do not produce strong candidates to challenge Tinubu come 2027. This approach gave birth to frustrated, disgruntled, humiliated members in all the political parties, including the APC, and spurred the affected members to seek redress in a new political platform. This situation, coupled with the awful and disappointing performance of APC in office, engineered the unity in all the opposition parties who came together to strengthen the African Democratic Congress (ADC), again putting a lie that Nigeria can ever become a one-party state and confirming that the APC braggadacio that they will turn Nigeria into a one-party state is a ruse.