Opposition under assault

You will be stating the obvious if you say that the dark clouds are gathering. The democratic space is being shrunk by the day. Those whose responsibility it is to promote democracy and good governance have constituted themselves into a cult. They now see the rest of the people as a horde of the uninitiated who must be kept at bay in matters of state.

The disposition of these conquistadors borders on winner-takes-all. Having gone the extra mile to grab power against the will of the people, these marauders have turned the system upside down. They loathe any form of challenge or opposition. They want a system that exists only for them and their narrow, selfish interests. It was their mad pursuit of parochialism that led Nigeria into the dangerous bend in which it presently finds itself.

But the real issue before us is that these buccaneers, having driven the country to the precipice, are insisting on holding tenaciously to their own end of the stick. They do not want those at the opposite spectrum to even remind them of where they have gone wrong. This has led to a ding-dong battle between the opposing tendencies. The sharp divide between the ruling establishment and the distraught opposition is what is eating Nigeria up at moment.

The week just gone by was as bizarre as it can be. It was the week in which the onslaught against the opposition heightened. During the week under reference, the convoy of Mr. Peter Obi of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) was attacked in Calabar, Cross River State. Obi and the NDC campaign team were in the state for their ongoing nationwide town hall meetings. But what they reaped as they made their way into Calabar city were smashed windscreens. People scampered to safety with many sustaining various degrees of injury.

The reason for the attack was simple. Those behind the violence wanted Obi and his team to abandon their mission in Cross River and run out of the state as hurriedly as possible. In other words, the masterminds of the attack did not want the NDC presidential candidate to campaign in Cross River State.

But the Calabar scenario was not an isolated one. It had happened elsewhere in the past. Even before the campaigns began, Obi was a victim of political intolerance in Edo State. His convoy was attacked at the residence of the former governor of the state, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun. The attack did not come without smashed windscreens and wounded bodies.

In Benue State, Governor Hyacinth Alia has long declared Peter Obi a persona non grata in the state. On two occasions, Alia has stopped Obi from entering Benue. The governor does not just want to hear the name Peter Obi.

In Enugu State, Governor Peter Mbah is still struggling with what he wants to do about Peter Obi. He has, so far, merely stopped short of going the Alia way. The political intolerance is spreading across the states. It is only a matter of time before it takes a more monstrous dimension.

When political violence is not the order of the day, hounding the opposition out of the way completely becomes the next strategy. The African Democratic Congress (ADC) is at the centre of the storm right now. A Federal Hight Court in Abuja presided over by Justice Peter Odo Lifu last Thursday invalidated the National Working Committee of the party, led by David Mark. The judgment, by extension, voided the candidature of Atiku Abubakar as the presidential candidate of the party. The judgment comes with a number of other damages to the existence of the ADC. Even though the party has appealed the judgment, the development is an indication of the fact that all is not well with the polity. With just about two months to the presidential election, the judgment is bound to put a wedge in the effort of the ADC to go into the 2027 general election as a formidable force with the capacity to give the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) a bloody nose.

As if these acts of subterfuge are not enough, President Bola Tinubu systematically ensured that almost all states of the federation are under his control. Under the Tinubu presidency, governors are not given a free hand to choose which political parties to belong to. They have compulsorily been cajoled and blackmailed into joining Tinubu’s APC. Having got 34 out of 36 governors to his side, Tinubu then began to give them handouts on how to stifle the opposition in their states. One of the most telling is the directive by state authorities, which ensures that candidates of opposition political parties are not allowed to mount campaign billboards. Anyone of them who insists on mounting one must have to break into the vaults of the Central Bank of Nigeria to have access to the funds required. The states are not alone. Even the Federal Capital Territory, which is supposed to belong to all Nigerians, is exclusively reserved for the President and his APC. Campaign posters of the President and APC National Assembly candidates are all over the FCT. But candidates of opposition political parties are barred from such basic freedom because a prohibitive cost has been placed on the mounting of campaign billboards. The whole idea is to keep the opposition as invisible, as voiceless and as faceless as possible. This level of intolerance for the opposition has not been witnessed in Nigeria before. But it is taking place under Tinubu who, ironically, is a product of opposition politics.

Because the opposition in Nigeria is gasping for breath, nobody is reminding Tinubu of his transgressions. We have a President who converted Nigeria into a Yoruba country. While that was going on, Nigerians cried why. They complained loudly. But rather than retrace his steps, the President chose to inflict more damage to the people’s psyche. That’s how bad it was then. Now that Tinubu is campaigning for re-election, the expectation is that Nigerians would remind him of his sins. But nobody is talking about them. He is sailing through his vast ocean of sins as if nothing was ever the matter. If Tinubu has the audacity to campaign for re-election, it is because Nigerians have not confronted him with his sins. Nigerians have glossed over his transgressions so much so that the man is being rewarded for his misdeeds. The time has come for the opposition to shake off its lethargy. It must rise to the occasion. It has the responsibility to ensure that those who crippled Nigeria do not take it ultimately to the gallows.