Intra-Elite Factionalism and the Quest for Sustainable Political Platforms in Nigeria

Introduction

The epochal event of the defeat of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), the hitherto governing party in Nigeria, at the 2015 general elections after 16 uninterrupted years at the helm of governance no doubt raised the credibility of country’s democracy. What is, however, understated is the fact that the defeat was partly as a result of the implosion of the party. The signs and the cracks were all evident for the discerning observer and analyst. While the remote cause can be traced to the origin of the party as an assemblage of people with differing world-views, the immediate trigger was the lack of transparency in the emergence of officials who were to administer the affairs of the party at the national congress of the party on 24 March 2012. The electoral management body, which is statutorily empowered to monitor the internal conduct of parties, also affirmed that the 2012 congress fell short of democratic standard. The party was therefore left with no choice but to repeat the process. The rescheduled congress, which was held on 31 August 2013, a date that coincided with the fifteenth anniversary of the party, witnessed the walkout of some vocal and aggrieved governors and other party leaders from the convention ground, when it became apparent to them that the congress was a choreographed process with the aim of producing a pre-determined outcome. The poor handling of the fallout from that walkout of the dissenting group resulted first in the formation of a parallel executive by the group, which they called the ‘New PDP’ and, eventually, the defection of a majority of them to the newly formed All Progressive Congress (APC) (Adeniyi, 2017).

Intra-party conflict is not new in Nigeria; the country’s political history is replete with accounts of factional feuds within political parties. However, the mass defection of incumbent governors and scores of parliamentarians from the national governing party, as demonstrated in the case of the PDP, was unprecedented in the democratic evolution of the country. The mutually antagonistic and hardline positions of the feuding parties at every phase of the conflict underscores the underlying morass that has afflicted the party since its inception in 1998. The PDP has been its own nemesis; although it was the most successful party in terms of the number of states it controlled and national assembly seats it had won, yet it had never known peace. This caused Sunday Awoniyi, a founding member of the party, to lament that ‘the PDP has become a basket of scorpions stinging themselves to death’ (cited in Abdullahi, 2017: 263). This lack of internal cohesion is partly reflected in the number of impeachment proceedings that elected members of the party have initiated and completed against either presiding officers of the legislative arm or state governors who are fellow party members (Anifowoshe, 2004, Olurode, 2007). In an interview with a former national legal adviser of the PDP, he stated, inter alia: ‘When people are aggrieved or PDP members are aggrieved, it is usually about the sharing of positions, number one, party positions prior to government positions and then government positions … the general disposition is, what do I get? What is in it for me’? (Interview with a former PDP national legal adviser, 2016).

At the level of party administration, there is also a high turnover rate of party officials, especially at the national secretariat, where most national chairmen never completed their tenures, let alone sought re-election, as provided for in the party’s constitution. From Alex Ekwueme, who first chaired the group that metamorphosed into the party, the PDP has in 20 years of its existence produced 15 national chairmen in substantive or acting capacity. With 15 national chairmen in its 20-year history, it is no surprise that Nigeria’s erstwhile governing party has not been stable in order for it to serve as a foundation for a coherent public policy guide to the three administrations it produced, nor to provide effective opposition to the current governing party (Bourne, 2016). What is the origin of the protracted conflicts within the PDP, and how do they manifest in the polity? Will the formation of the APC on the eve of the last general elections and their eventual triumph lead to the emergence of two broad-based political parties each serving as an effective check on the excesses of the other, thereby instilling party discipline and robust intra-party democracy within the parties? The following sections attempt to provide answers to these questions.

The formation of the PDP

The current democratic dispensation emerged from the ashes of a pan-Nigerian anti-military dictatorship and nationalist movement, when a group of opinion leaders constituted themselves into a pressure group called the G18. The emergence of this group represented a strategic boost to the coalition of forces known as the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), actively opposed to the annulment of the 1993 presidential election. The initial Nigeria-wide opposition to the annulment had been subverted through an age-old contrivance of divide and rule. The G18 was soon broadened with converts and renamed G34 under the pro temporal leadership of Alex Ekwueme, a former vice-president. It was almost the entire political elite class coalesced in a bi-partisan front to confront the military. The formation of this group represented a significant setback for the military engineered fractionalization of the civilian wing of the ruling elite, who have been used as guinea pigs in the endless transition programmes since 1985. By a strange twist of fate and providence, it was not long after the establishment of this group that General Sani Abacha, who was the embodiment of the obstacle against the democratic progress of Nigeria, was removed from the scene by the cold hands of death aptly described by Karl Maier as a ‘coup from heaven’ (Abdullahi, 2017; Maier, 2000).

General Abdulsalami Abubakar, successor to General Sani Abacha, inaugurated a transition to civil rule programme that lasted for only 11 months, that transition programme, the shortest in the history of the country ushered in the current democratic dispensation. Commenting on the brevity of the process that led to the disengagement of the military after the demise of Abacha, one of Nigeria’s former presidents, Shehu Shagari, averred that the political parties of this dispensation were ‘created in a matter of weeks and prepared for election in a matter of days’ (cited in Saliu and Muhammad, 2008: 154).

A total of 29 political associations filed applications for registration when the transition timetable was announced; 26 associations returned their application forms to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the supervisory agency for the management of elections in Nigeria. At the end, only nine of these associations were given provisional registration to contest the local government elections of 5 December 1998. Of the nine political associations to qualify for final registration, INEC required them to score 10% success in at least 24 states of the federation and the federal capital territory (FCT) (Yakub, 2004). The philosophy behind the stringent conditions was to guide against the formation of political parties with narrow ties of ethnicity and religion. Three political parties –The People’s Democratic Party (PDP), The All People’s Party (APP) and The Alliance for Democracy (AD) – secured final registration after the council polls. While the PDP and APP met the requirement of 10% success in 36 and 35 states respectively, including the federal capital Abuja, the AD did not fulfil the requirement expressly, but was registered, ostensibly to foster multi-party democracy (Simbine, 2000).

PDP in the throes of internal conflicts

Apart from being an aggregation of people with commonality of interest, a political party is also the bedrock of democracy and a breeding ground for leadership and public policy articulation. Edmund Burke, one of the earliest theorists and philosophers, conceived of a political party as ‘a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavour, the national interest upon some particular principles in which they all agreed’ (cited in Adebayo, 2006: 46). What is germane from this definition is the fact that political parties are formed or organized around certain principles by people who share and agree on certain ideals which centres on the pursuit of the national interest. There are several other definitions of political party as there are scholars interrogating this concept. For instance, Giovani Satori sees a political party as ‘any political group that presents at elections, and is capable of placing through elections, candidates for public office’ (cited in Kopecky and Mair, 2003: 275). Satori’s definition is broad enough to include all political parties, whether in non-competitive single party regimes or in a competitive multi-party system. Janda et al. (2008) listed the functions of a political party to include nominating candidates for election to public office, structuring voting choices, proposing alternative government programmes and co-ordinating the actions of government officials. The PDP, like other parties in the current dispensation, has not satisfactorily fulfilled this theoretical and normative ideal. The party originated as a conglomerate of 15 or more disparate political associations, most of which unsuccessfully sought official registration as political parties during the failed transition of the previous military regimes. The various political groups that fused to form the party did not dissolve their identities in order to produce an organic whole; members acted as if they were still representing their unregistered groups. Consequently the party became the strongest opposition to itself with sporadic internal fights and quarrels (Amusan, 2011).

The PDP at inception was envisioned by its founding members as a pan-Nigerian political party strong enough to keep the military perpetually from seeking to intervene in the country’s politics and drive national development. However, the retreating military inadvertently bequeathed to Nigeria a behemoth whose bigwigs and leading members included a long roll call of ex-servicemen recycled but not fully socialized into the democratic mode of governance. Because of the enormous wealth and networks forged during the military era, they seek to operate in the milieu of democracy but retained their dictatorial ways. Once the retired generals set the template, their civilian counterparts were quick to learn the nuances of military bravado (Adekanye, 1999). All those who succeeded in fighting their way into positions either at party or public office usurped party power and undermined its supremacy. Once elected, such officials become more powerful than the party that produced them; in such a scenario, party autonomy and supremacy suffered, internal democracy became alien and loyalty shifted from the party to individual office-holders and their wealthy financiers. Party discipline was thrown overboard and executive whim and extra-constitutional conduct reigned supreme. Commenting on the nature of party administration and governance in the immediate post-military era, Adejumobi argued that:

The need to build a personal political machine through gaining control of the ruling PDP compelled the Obasanjo regime to take drastic steps, which were in most cases antidemocratic and eroded the party’s capacity for internal democracy and reform. First, most of the founding members of the party who could have insisted on order and procedure and provide resistance to presidential dominance of the party were either hounded out of the party or silenced. Second, the executive suborned the leadership of the party and ensured that it (the executive) played a lead role in appointing the party’s leadership … The internal party machinery was overhauled to give control to the presidency; hence, the party congresses and intraparty elections were mostly geared toward ‘electing’ ‘presidentially sanctioned or approved candidates. Executive loyalty and control took precedence over internal party democracy. In this undemocratic context, a chain of informal networks of party control and loyalists from the national to the local level were erected, prompting violence, disorder, political assassination, and general insecurity in the internal workings and intraparty electoral processes of the PDP’. (Adejumobi, 2010: 10–11)

The protracted intra-party conflicts in the PDP also informed the contention by Anifowose that ‘never in our history have we been confronted with the monstrosity of an assembly so vulnerable to self-mortification and self-annihilation’. The same author referenced former President Olusegun Obasanjo depicting the PDP as ‘a dynamic amalgam of interest groups held together if anything at all, the fact that the party is in power and therefore the resultant strong expectation of patronage’ (Anifowoshe, 2004: 65).

A former chairman of the party, Bamanga Tukur, corroborated this assertion when he described the PDP as ‘an amalgam of diverse groups united only by one purpose – to grab power – but had not yet fused into a functional political party for development’ (Guardian Newspaper Online, 2013a). Agbaje on his part attributed the pathology of political parties to the incessant interruption of the democratic process by the military, which prevented the evolution of parties and party system over a sustainable period of time. In his words:

The sheer fact of disruption of the evolution of political parties following every announcement of a military coup robbed the party system of the time and space to garner required knowledge and experience in the peaceful negotiation of relationships within and between parties and to engage in the routinization and institutionalization required of a democratic order. Rather, what was encouraged was a commandist, militaristic political culture characterized by a disdain for intraparty and interparty dissent and that permitted the worst dimensions of personal allegiances and de-institutionalization in the guise of enforcing party discipline. (Agbaje, 2010: 73)

The 2013 national congress and its fallout

The walk out from the convention ground on 31 August 2013 by aggrieved governors, their supporters and some party leaders coincided with the fifteenth anniversary of the PDP; the party was officially inaugurated on 31 August 1998. The emergence of parallel factional groups within virtually every state chapter of the party has been a recurring theme, but the emergence of factional leadership at the national level was first witnessed in 2006, before the August 2013 open rebellion. On 9 June 2006 a splinter group led by Solomon Lar, a founding chairman of the party, and a former deputy national chairman, Shuaib Oyedokun, formed a parallel executive after accusing then chairman Ahmadu Ali of sidelining many founding members. The group then proceeded to open a new secretariat, but was forcefully strangled by the strong-arm tactics of the Obasanjo administration (Premium Times Online Newspaper, 2013a,b; This Day Newspaper, 2013b, c, d.

The national organ of the party has, however, remained perennially unstable as a result of the internal crisis. The party in its 20 years of existence has produced 15 national chairmen; 10 were substantive chairmen while others were appointed in an acting capacity. The substantive chairmen were Barnabas Gemade, Audu Ogbeh, Ahmadu Ali, Vincent Ogbulafor, Okwesilieze Nwodo, Bamanga Tukur, Adamu Mu’azu, and now Uche Secondus. Alex Ekwueme and Solomon Lar were pioneer pro-tem chairmen and Uche Secondus, who once served in an acting capacity, was recently elected as a substantive chairman. Bello Haliru Muhammed, Abubakar Kawu Baraje, and the factional chairmen Ali Modu Sherriff and Ahmed Makarfi were appointed to preside in an acting capacity.

With the exception of Ahmadu Ali and Barnabas Gemade, no other substantive chairman completed his tenure, much less sought re-election according to the party constitution. The high turnover rate of the leadership of the party tells the story of a political party reeling under the weight of instability occasioned by internal factional disputes (Guardian Newspaper Online, 2013a, b).

A plausible reason for the high turnover of national chairmen is the fact that most governors are uncomfortable with the idea of national chairmen emerging from their domain; as this would not only supplant them as leaders of the party in their respective states, but also render them politically vulnerable. Bamanga Tukur’s emergence as national chairman and the rumoured attempt to install his son as governor was resisted by the sitting governor of his home state of Adamawa. It was during his tenure that two sitting governors of Rivers and Sokoto states were suspended, an action the PDP governors considered unconstitutional, and they resolved to remove him. His predecessor in office Okwesilieze Nwodo also suffered similar fate as the governor of his home state led the charge for his removal. The fate of Vincent Ogbulafor as chairman was sealed when, in 2010, after the death of Yar’adua, he had insisted after a meeting with PDP governors that the position of president would remain in the north in 2011 in fulfilment of the party’s zoning arrangement. It was a pronouncement that brought him in collision with Goodluck Jonathan immediately he became the substantive president. Adamu Muazu, who took over from Tukur, also exited the position unceremoniously in the wake of the party’s defeat in the 2015 general election (Abdullahi, 2017). Adeniyi submitted that ‘perhaps nothing signposted the level of intolerance as the fact that within a period of five years under Jonathan, the PDP had six national chairmen and the circumstances under which one left the post for another spoke to the temperament of a president who used and dumped them at will’ (Adeniyi, 2017: 31).

Remarkably, before the August 2013 national convention, five northern state governors of Kano, Niger, Sokoto, Jigawa and Adamawa had drawn national attention when they embarked on consultations with some statesmen across the country, calling their attention to what they termed ‘injustice and impunity in the party’ (BBC News online, 26 November 2013). Many of these governors eventually broke away from the party after the litany of their grievances – which included increased repression in the party, arbitrary suspension of members, abuse of the constitution of the party, whimsical shifting of the original date of the rescheduled convention approved by the national executive council of the party, the suspension without due process of the governors of Rivers and Sokoto states, illegal dissolution of some state chapters of the party and the manipulation of delegates list for the congress, among other undemocratic conduct – was not addressed to their satisfaction. The faction argued that the listed anomalies were desperate permutations towards the 2015 general elections, designed to shut out any real or perceived opposition ahead of the party’s presidential primaries for the 2015 elections (Adeniyi, 2017; Adetula, 2014).

Former President Jonathan was sensitive to the moves by certain powerful chieftains to block or work against his re-election bid. Recruiting Bamanga Tukur, the national chairman at the time, he had the firm belief that Tukur would not work against his interest. In an insightful commentary on the political brinkmanship of that era, Olusegun Adeniyi asserted in his weekly column that:

The umbrella (symbol of the PDP) was designed to give shelter to a finite number of persons, notably the man holding it (Chairman of the party) and the one for whom it is meant to be covering (President Jonathan). All other renegade passengers can exit into the rain in their trench coats. (This Day Newspaper Online, 2013a)

This comment, as satirical as it may sound, reflected the mindset that animated the management of the party’s internal processes at the time. Officials saddled with the responsibility of administering the party are beholden to those holding executive positions and not to party rules and guidelines. The erstwhile party chairman Bamanga Tukur, reacting to the walkout from the convention ground and the formation of a parallel executive, retorted:

Let me state categorically, that the PDP as the sole custodian of the sacred mandate of the over 160 million Nigerians and which in the last 14 years has lifted high the banner of democracy will not fold it arms while some undemocratic and unpatriotic element destroy our common destiny by causing division and confusion among the people … all persons elected on the platform of our great party at all levels who identify with these enemies of the oneness and greatness of our party shall have their seat declared vacant as required by the law. (The Punch Newspaper Online, 2013a, b)

The party chairman made reference to an ineffective internal conflict resolution mechanism and admonished aggrieved members to approach and utilize this medium to achieve their objectives, arguing, inter alia, that ‘I wish to emphasize that the PDP has adequate mechanisms for internal conflict resolution, all members are therefore advised to ventilate their grievances through this medium. There is only one lawfully recognized PDP and I am firmly in charge’ (The Punch Newspaper Online, 2013a). What became apparent from the disagreements in the party is the fact that it was not over principles or about the welfare of citizens; this much was confirmed by the reaction of organized labour to the crisis:

Labour and the working people who cannot take flight out of the country will not watch while democracy fought for with agony and pain is being undermined by new ‘militicians’ whose ambition is power without responsibility to the people and the nation. We cannot criminalise dissent that was the discredited way of the military, not the tested way of democrats’ worldwide (The Punch Newspaper Online, 2013b)

While the crisis raged, majority of the governors elected on the party platform relocated to Abuja and only made occasional visits to their states. Issues pertaining to governance in their states were in complete abeyance, since major policies, programmes and decisions revolve and require the authorization of the governor, the machinery of governance and service delivery suffered greatly (National Mirror Newspaper Online, 2013). In an 18-page open letter written by former President Olusegun Obasanjo addressed to President Jonathan, he criticized him for his poor handling of national and party affairs, according to Obasanjo:

It would be unfair to continue to level full blames on the chairman for all that goes wrong with the party. The chairman is playing the tune dictated by the paymaster. But the paymaster is acting for a definitive purpose for which deceit and deception seem to be the major ingredient. (Premium Times Newspaper Online, 2013b)

While former President Jonathan’s media aide described the letter as ‘unbecoming, self-serving and provocative’, the then chairman of the party, in his own reply to Obasanjo’s letter, was more vehement, asserting that:

For such a statement against the person of the national chairman of the PDP to come from chief Obasanjo, a former head of state and president is most unfortunate … That Dr Tukur as the national chairman and one of the founding fathers of the party can never allow his opinion or decisions to be teleguided by an external forces as a principled administrator and seasoned politician. (The Punch Newspaper Online, 2013b)

The intriguing fact is that most of the accusations levelled against President Jonathan by Obasanjo in the said letter were the same acts and misconducts he perpetrated perhaps in greater measure when he was in office. President Jonathan therefore only plagiarized Obasanjo’s template for governance and party administration. Obasanjo, while in office, not only attempted to get an unconstitutional third term, he hounded and drove out known critics of his style of administration from the party, propped up and empowered his loyalists and godfathers to take over the party structure in the state chapters and impeached recalcitrant state governors perceived to be against his third term bid (Nwabueze, 2007; Olurode, 2007). Jonathan, as a protégé of Obasanjo, only acted true to type and as a good student of the ‘do or die’ school of politics his benefactor epitomized. This point does not, however, detract from the incontrovertible and weighty nature of the allegation levelled against the Jonathan’s administration by his mentor, most of which were so blatant for all to see. What became clear from that moment was the fact that for the PDP, things did not just fall apart; the centre indeed could no longer hold as Obasanjo went on to announce his retirement from partisan politics and publicly tore up his party membership card in the run-up to the presidential election, signalling a final severance of relationship with the party. Adetula, commenting on this phase of the conflict in the party, contends that ‘August 2013 saw the PDP in the throes of serious crises and neither the personality trait of President Jonathan, style, vision, nor other personal attributes that he may possess have helped in managing the situation’ (Adetula, 2014: 333). Jonathan, recounting his experience as president in his book entitled My Transition Hours, acknowledged the fluid and unstable turn the PDP had taken under his watch, according to him ‘my Party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), presented a front which, in reality was not united, as the party was already imploding along ethnic and religious lines’ (Jonathan, 2018: 4). Another phase of vicious internal conflict began with the defeat of the party in the presidential election held in March 2015 and won by the APC. The then national chairman, Adamu Muazu, was forced to resign after presiding over the party’s defeat in that election. Uche Secondus, the deputy national chairman, acted in his stead, until certain interests within the party brought in Ali Modu Sherriff as chairman. Sherriff was a former governor and parliamentarian who fell out with the leadership of the newly formed APC and crossed over to the PDP, and who had barely spent one year in the party when he was foisted on members as national chairman. The party became polarized between groups loyal to Modu Sherriff and the other group led by Ahmed Markarfi, a caretaker committee chairman constituted by majority of the elected representatives of the party. The Supreme Court eventually resolved the leadership tussle by recognizing Ahmed Markafi’s faction as the authentic executive of the party. A national congress of the party was then organized after the Supreme Court victory that has now produced a new national working committee, manifesting the ascendancy of a new factional tendency within the party. The point in this narrative is the fact that the PDP has not evolved into a proper political party ready to serve as a bulwark for democracy and a nursery ground for leadership recruitment.

Patterns, manifestations and response to conflict in the PDP

Party members adopted different strategies and methods in dealing with conflicts within the party. Some of the measures party members adopted included suspension or outright expulsion of members, formation of parallel party structures, defection or carpet-crossing to rival parties, impeachment or threat of impeachment, litigation and counter-litigation, verbal and physical assault and violence. This section expatiates on this coping mechanism employed by party members.

The merger of opposition parties and the birth of a two-party system?

The political history of Nigeria has been the story of repeated abortive attempts at making Nigeria a two-party political system. That was the case in the first, second and the truncated third republic. Then and now, it was in response to the realization that it will only take a concerted action by the opposition parties to mount an effective challenge on the ruling party at the national level. These tendencies never effectively took off, let alone were consummated; it is therefore difficult to say whether they would have stood the test of time. On each of those occasions the military opportunistically intervened and not only reversed the democratic evolution but sentenced Nigeria to a crisis of governance worse than the one that provided the pretext for intervention. The first military intervention eventually plunged the country into a 30-month civil war and subsequent intervention culminated in the annulment of the 1993 presidential election and dragged the country to the brink of another civil war (Adeniyi, 2011; Akinola, 2014).

In the first republic, the second federal elections conducted in 1964 were contested between two broad coalitions of parties. The opposition parties that came together to form the United Progressive Grand Alliance (UPGA) comprised principally the Action Group (AG), the National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC), the Northern Element Progressive Union (NEPU) and the United Middle Belt Congress (UMBC). While the ruling party, the Northern People’s Congress (NPC), formed an alliance with the breakaway faction of the AG that had merged with the western wing of the NCNC to form a new party known as the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP); together with the ruling NPC they formed the Nigeria National Alliance (NNA). It was these two broad political alliances that contested the 1964 federal election; the opposition party eventually boycotted the election in many significant areas and the controversy arising from the conduct of that election led to the January 1966 coup (Akinola, 2014; Ige, 1995).

History was repeated in the second republic (1979–83) when the National Party of Nigeria emerged as the dominant party following the 1979 general election. This scenario compelled the self-styled progressive politicians to attempt to forge an alternative political platform via the Progressive Parties’ Alliance (PPA) which comprised the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), the Nigeria’s Peoples Party (NPP), the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) and the Great Nigeria Peoples Party (GNPP). The alliance collapsed on the altar of ethnic rivalry as members were unable to agree on a common candidate for the 1983 presidential election. Richard Joseph argued that:

Although the UPN was actively engaged in the meetings of the ‘progressive governors’ and although it participated in the negotiations which led to the creation of the Progressive People’s Alliance (PPA) in March 1982, it did not enter into the subsequent arrangement to have a new party, the Progressive People’s Party (PPP). (Joseph, 1999: 167)

In the aborted third republic, two political parties were decreed into existence by military fiat; these parties were certainly not as ideologically coherent as their label ostensibly gave the impression, but the Social Democratic Party (SDP) was without doubt closer to progressivism on the ideological spectrum than its opponent, the National Republican Convention (NRC). The experiment collapsed with the annulment of the 1993 presidential election. The country, however, faced a choice between a broadly conservative party and a roughly progressive party in that election. The Babangida experiment was soon followed by General Sani Abacha’s aberration where the five registered political parties of that era were aptly described by Bola Ige as the five fingers of a leprous hand (Babarinsa, 2003; Tyoden, 1994). These parties adopted Abacha as their consensus presidential candidate, calling on him to transmute from a military head of state to a civilian president, this absurdity was terminated with the sudden demise of Abacha in June 1998. In the same vein, at the start of the current democratic dispensation in 1999, there was an alliance between the APP and the AD which succeeded in fielding Olu Falae as the presidential flag bearer of the APP/AD alliance against Olusegun Obasanjo of the PDP in the presidential election of 27 February 1999 (Simbine, 2002).

The democratic and political evolution of the country since independence depicts an attempt and movement towards the formation of a two-party system. The uninterrupted spell of democracy since 1999 thus provided the opportunity to evolve and consummate strong alternative platforms to serve the course of democratic consolidation and the greater good of Nigerian citizens (This Day Newspaper Online, 2013a).

The merger of opposition parties was consummated in July 2013, when the election management body, INEC, issued a certificate of registration to the new party: the APC. It was a journey which started in the build-up to the 2011 general election. A combination of factors, among which was the limited time and the personal ambition of some of the front-line members of the merger group, made it impossible to reach an agreement before the presidential election in 2011. The major parties that came together to found the new political party (APC) included the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the CPC, the ANPP and a splinter group from the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA).

As argued earlier, the received wisdom in African politics is the fact that opposition parties can only put up an effective challenge to the ruling party when they merge or form a working coalition during election. The formation of the APC is perhaps a realization of this political truism (Adeniyi, 2011). The birth of the new party engendered a national debate on the character of the leading members and the promoters of the party and their claim to progressive credentials. While a segment of the commentators and analysts dismissed the merger as simply an alliance of frustrated and aggrieved politicians, others welcomed the emergence of the party, arguing that a strong and competitive two-party system can only serve as a sinew to the nation’s democracy. While it may be true that the country’s democracy will be better served by two strong parties, however, Nigeria cannot afford to have two parties whose only difference is their nomenclature, such that if any political actors loses out in the power calculus in either of the two leading parties, they quickly defect to the rival party in the quest for power. This appears to be the case presently with politicians moving in different directions depending on the power equation and permutations at every round of election. The APC is not exactly an immaculate progressive party, as the name suggests; it is at best a motley crowd of discernible element of both progressivism and conservatism. The views of two associate fellows of the Africa Programme at Chatham House sum up the growing unease within the governing party. They argue that ‘almost five years since its establishment, the party is still an uneasy alliance of autonomous elite networks bound together by little more than incumbency and a collective desire to stay in power through 2023 and beyond’ (Page and Tayo, 2018: 6).

Conclusion: unending cycle of intra-elite factionalism and the crisis of governance

Political parties are not only a major agency for the recruitment and enthronement of political leaders in an electoral democracy, they are the foundation and building blocks of the process of democratic evolution and consolidation. The centrality of political parties is therefore crucial as the fate of the country is inexorably tied to the imagination and temperaments of the leading lights in the dominant parties. Ideally, parties are formed on the basis of ideological or philosophical persuasions. To belong in a party suggests commitment to the ideals which such a party espouses. Political parties should provide the platforms to articulate and debate the big issues so that voters make informed decisions. However, the nature and character of the dominant political parties in the current dispensation are far from this ideal. The leading elites of these parties lack clear ideological orientation, they do not articulate alternative world-views, rarely mobilize the citizenry around any grand vision and routinely adopt anti-democratic methods to confront and resolve issues. Political parties in Nigeria thus seem to be locked in the Hobbesian war of ‘war of all against all’, negating the very essence of party politics and imperilling the country’s quest for democratic consolidation and development. The parties have also not developed or articulated a programmatic link between the party as an organization and the party in government. This lack of synergy accounts for the abysmal failure in all development indices posted by the country since the return to civilian rule.

Intra-elite factionalism has eclipsed the big and existential threat of increasing immiseration, inequality and insecurity in the country (Leadership Newspaper Online, 2013). National discourse is never about canvassing policy solutions to the country’s myriad of challenges, but rather about personality clashes and the egos of public office-holders. The country recently added another ignoble feather to its cap as the homeland with the largest concentration of people living in extreme poverty. However, the reforms carried out in the electoral process that led to the substantial elimination of fraudulent electoral outcomes and the alternation of power have presented a chance to deepen and consolidate democracy in Nigeria. It is also an opportunity for reformists to insist on internal reforms so as to transform and reinvent the two main parties from being mere vehicles for those seeking public office to becoming truly democratic institutions that will serve the course of national development. The PDP, regardless of its inchoate provenance, made the transition to democracy possible in 1999; the party has also invariably facilitated the alternation of power between political parties possible in 2015, a feat the country had hitherto not accomplished. The party thus deserves the support of relevant stakeholders, including civil society groups, to enable it evolve into a truly democratic party.