TheCable

Imagine this scenario. You planned to travel to Abuja from Lagos and on reaching the park, behold the bus you are to travel in; tyres thread worn, glasses broken and only just being held in place by the plastic inner frame, seats torn, and the lamps broken. And to complete the dismal, unencouraging picture, the driver behind the steering wheel looks dishevelled and slovenly with eyes reddened no doubt from the effects substance abuse.

Do you need a clairvoyant to tell you that entering such a vehicle to Abuja from Lagos is a sure way to death?
That unfortunately is the analogy of the situation with both the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP) the two main political parties in the country.

As events of the past months have shown both parties are disasters already happening and what is more their current trajectory of crises threatens to take the whole country down with them to perdition.

The late venerable former Attorney General of the Federation, Bola Ige once described aptly and cryptically the five political parties of the General Sani Abacha military era as ‘’five fingers of a leprous hand’’. In similar fashion, today the APC and PDP could be likened to two sides of a dud coin.

Let us take the PDP.

Once a strong and proud political party which trod over this country like a colossus, the PDP is now for all practical purposes a dead party waiting for the undertakers.

As I write Its Chairman Uche Secondus is being slowly roasted alive over the coals by a lynch mob within the party led incidentally by a powerful loquacious Governor who worked to install him to the position in the first place. Chairman Secondus has been ruthlessly thrown under the bus all in the effort by the Governor to control the party machinery with a view to bargaining to become the running mate of whoever emerges the presidential flag bearer of the party in the 2023 elections.

Ever since the PDP lost the 2015 elections to the APC it has been dying slowly with its once formidable ramparts going aground as a result of vicious internal wrangling. The civil war has been brutal with many of the party’s once leading lights biting the dust in the process.

In the current dispensation it is hard to see how the PDP so mortally wounded by the massive blows it has inflicted upon itself could muster the strength to make a good showing in 2023.

Then the APC. Remove President Muhammadu Buhari and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and his acolytes and the APC in reality is PDP in diaspora or PDP annex. The bulk of the APC grandees today were once stalwarts of the PDP and because an apple does not fall far from its tree, APC cuts a mirror image of the PDP it strenuously denies being a clone of.

The APC is greatly flattered that since it came to power in 2015, it had been a net gainer of defectors from the PDP. But this euphoria masks a hard truth; APC with all the razzmatazz is like the Titanic which could not prove its integrity against an iceberg which sank it upon contact. Many Nigerians believe that with all the untoward happenings currently within the party, APC like its counterpart the PDP will inevitably go under .

Are these then the vehicles that will take us to 2023?

As they have always done, the Nigerian political elite in both parties are trying to sell us the dummy that they have what it takes to get us to the next circle of elections in 2023. And how do they plan to convince us on this given the fact that as is clear as crystal they cannot even manage amicably and successfully the issues within the parties they belong?

An elaborate pantomime of ostentatious meetings mainly for the optics of it, followed by flowery but meaningless communiqués about ‘’party supremacy’’ and a rash of ex parte court orders shopped around the country designed to show that the parties involved are law abiding is what our political elites hope to convince Nigerians that they are on top of the democratic game.

Meanwhile in reality both parties are nothing but. Party congresses from ward to federal level to elect officials do not approximate the basic requirements of democratic practice. They are most times decided by skulduggery of the main political players and the sleight of hand of party bigwigs. Not only does this weaken the democratic credentials of the parties, it seriously interrogates the claim by our elites that they can be relied upon to institute democracy and development in the country going forward.

To believe that the parties in their present state and those that make them up can take us to 2023 and beyond is to engage in self-delusion. Our political experience as a country should teach us this is a dangerous complacency we can ill afford.

That having come this far since 1999 and our politics still offers nothing qualitative and redeeming but the usual uncertainty and brinkmanship that has been our bane, should not surprise Nigerians. We started out on this dispensation on the trajectory of papering over our cracks as a country instead of the fundamental reordering of the polity that our past political experiences demanded. Along the line we injected a heavy dose of entitlement and settlement into the body politic thereby turning our governance and political process into one giant pork barrel.

In the name of democracy we have empowered some amongst us who have turned round to disempower and disenfranchise the very Nigerians they are supposed to serve. To perpetuate their ilk in power the political elite have narrowed and restricted the democratic space leaving out majority of Nigerians from participating meaningfully in the political process.

In this regard the elite have weaponized mass poverty as an instrument for state capture and control at the expense of the democratic process that made them and the nation they are expected to lead with Justice and equity.

The current situation with the APC and PDP is tending towards the point of denouement of both parties on the road to 2023. As both political parties do not appear to be in a position to advance our quest for the deepening of the genuine democratic and development needs of the country, there is likelihood of their collapsing like a pack of cards in the run up to the 2023 elections. And the resulting situation of flux will likely throw up new political realities that may make or mar the country.

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