Recently, our polity has been hit by a severe political disease known as “jumpology.” Many may not be familiar with the term, especially in the context it is being deployed here. So, let me give a little explanation. It is the inimical act of politicians waking up and just leaving their political parties and moving over to another one in power at the local government, state or federal level. The bug has been in our politics for long but currently it is assuming a frightening dimension. Members of “losing parties no longer exercise patience, they just wake up and announce a change in party loyalty.
From what we are seeing, politicians are moving in droves from fringe political parties like Labour Party or All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), into the two bigger ones, the All Progressives Congress (APC) (which is currently ruling at the centre) and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). But the APC is having the far better part. Was it anticipated, the answer is yes. If antecedent tells a story then it was clear from his ascension to power that President Bola Tinubu would work to consolidate his hold on power, and one sure way of getting that through would be tacit decimation of the opposition political parties.
It took time to come but ardent political watchers were certain it would come. It has not only touched down, it is raining. Nobody sees the soldiers and their guns but everyone on the battlefield sees the casualties. The mighty are falling, even those we thought had drank enough from the fountain of quasi-ideology. Who would have thought Senator Ifeanyi Okowa who had been to the Senate and later served as governor of rich Delta State and the Vice Presidential candidate of the PDP in 2023 general election would ever contemplate jumping ship but it has happened.
Okowa didn’t go alone, he took with him the state governor, his cabinet members, members of the state’s House of Assembly, elected chairmen of local governments, their cabinets and the entire PDP structure in the state. From Kebbi State three senators elected on PDP platform just took their bags and ported into the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), which took over the strategic Kano State from APC in the 2023 poll but the balance is beginning to tilt with three senators leaving the party in which they won to pitch their tent with APC.
It has been the new development all over but the most curious if not hilarious happenings in this regard have come from Akwa Ibom and Rivers State where the two governors elected on the platform of PDP are beginning to act untoward or to sing very strange songs. It must be noted they are not alone. So many other governors are also gravitating very dangerously to the marks. Akwa Ibom State Governor Umo Eno, a pastor, two years ahead of the next general election has already endorsed the reelection of the incumbent President Tinubu of opposition APC.
He didn’t stop there: during a press conference in the state he gave out an analogy of a traveller and faulty plane and the alternative of booking the next available flight to his destination, an illustration very suggestive it was a question of time before he, his cabinet and others reenact the Delta example. Political watchers are watching. Happen it will. Governor Sim Fubara can only survive if he jumps, he is punch drunk and has indicated so. For him it’s a matter of time. Recall the President was in Anambra State few days ago to commission projects done by Governor Chukwuma Soludo of APGA, a party which General Odimegwu Ojukwu formed, in collaboration with others.
In the outing APGA endorsed the reelection of the president and a former Secretary of the Commonwealth, Sir Emeka Anyaoku, pleaded for the president to in return adopt Soludo for reelection. We see the mischief, APGA members stalling the party’s growth so that an opposition party, in competition with it can grow. This is liquidation. Now if the president adopts Soludo what then happens to his party in the state and their candidate who would have spent millions of naira to purchase nomination forms? Again most of the incumbent governors are of doubtful loyalty to their parties.
This tells so much about our political culture, political development and issues at the root of national underdevelopment. The ugly development is pervasive but for reason of space we stop at the few representative samples already mentioned and look at the reason (s) they give. We know inchoate processes for party formation, lack of ideology, absence of internal democracy, rise of oligarchy, selfishness and survival drive the defection of people from one party to the other. The turncoats reason, going by what they have been bold to present in public, is the desire to link or connect their states to “the centre” for better attention and reward.
The crux of today’s discourse isn’t whether to defect is a right or wrong action or who can defect or who should not. The focus is on the reason of having to” link or connect” a state or a people, citizens of the country to the centre of power and authority. This has been the luring tool, people are told except one belongs to the ruling party nothing for you or your area. That the ruling class uses the phrase is indicative that besides the idea running in their hearts, it could be the dastardly runs as a policy in the country.
When he was the president, General Muhammadu Buhari once told the media in America that those who voted for his party were entitled to 95 percent of democratic dividends leaving five percent to those who didn’t vote for them. This attitude is wrong in all ramifications. The country is one and all citizens and even residents are entitled to all good things that can flow from the land. Politics and politicking should not divide. Politics is only meant to aggregate interest for proper governance by the people through representative trust holding system.
When citizens have finished with their choices for leadership it behoves on the elected representatives to act in the best interest of the collective. Appointments are to be drawn from within the point and beyond. There should be no discrimination in terms of capacity.
What should be paramount is getting the jobs at hand down and in the most efficient way. The point being canvased, and very vigorously too, is that no section of the country should be denied development on account that people from the area didn’t vote for the winning party. Running on that lane would be to court disaster. What we suffer have their roots in past attempts to take undue advantage. It may have served very narrow interest but from a broad perspective it hasn’t served the general good at all.
One could ask the Delta defectors why they are talking of connection to the centre as the magic wand with the huge cash flow the state has. Is the state a part of Cameroon? The plain truth is that those who use ‘connection to centre’ aren’t helping the development of the country, they remind of bad practices, they should be asked to desist forthwith. Our concentration should be on words, sentences and actions that promote cohesion and the greatest good. Decamping with power doesn’t help us at all. Adding pepper to it leaves us worse.