THE ANPP CONVENTION
ELECTIONS: A VICTORY OVER MILITARY DICTATORSHIP
By
Jide Ayobolu
<jideayobolu@yahoo.co.uk>
Sept 6, 2006
General Muhammadu Buhari’s chances of contesting the 2007 presidential
elections on the platform of his political party, the All Nigeria
People’s Party (ANPP) hung in the balance as his candidates for the
party positions were worsted at the national convention of the party in
Abuja. Former speaker of the House of Representatives, Chief Edwin Ume
Ezeoke who is believed to favour the party joining the new mega party,
emerged the new national chairman of the party. Ume-Ezeoke scored 3,998
votes to defeat Chief Mike Ahamba who scored a total of 1,849 votes.
Ahamba was believed to be Buhari’s choice. Senator Suleiman Kumo emerged
as National Secretary after he was defeated Alhaji Abu Galadima who is
said to be in the Buhari camp.
The influx of ex-military officers has been
unprecedented since 1999, these military personnel now see, the
political arena as a vocation that they retire into, so, most of them do
not see public office as an avenue for rendering selfless and
qualitative service to the people, but instead another means of survival
and eking out a livelihood. It is very instructive to note that most of
them do not really understand in detail, what democracy and democratic
values are. Most of them still have the military mentality, with the
military high command structure, the centralized hierarchical structure
as well as the obey before complain mindset. They now foist on the
Nigerian politics this kind of military arrangement which has highly
militarized politics in Nigeria.
It would be recalled that, it is in this
regard that the Ahmadu Ali’s faction of the PDP introduced garrison
politics into Nigeria’s political firmament. This led to a situation
where a duly elected national chairman was forced to resign at
gun-point, it equally accentuated a situation where all the
democratically elected officers of the party were removed in a military
fashion and handpicked people imposed on the party and it also led to a
situation in which members of the party were de-registered and new ones
sought. The basic ingredients of democracy were brushed aside, namely,
the freedom of expression, speech and thought, the freedom of
association, the right to vote and be voted for, the emasculation of the
media, the use of the coercive instruments and agencies of the state to
terrorize the citizen, adoption of military tactics in a democratic
setting and the gradual slip of the country into a banana republic or
what has been called the organized police state.
This military manipulation of the political
process cuts across board in Nigeria’s political scene. It is with
military divide and rule stratagems, that, schism as well as
disaffection was caused in Alliance for Democracy, All Nigerian People’s
Party, All Progressive Grand Alliance and it is this same military brute
force and victory at all cost that is rocking the PDP presently. It is
because politics has been viewed as a matter of life and death and
winners-take-all, that the 1999 and election were massively rigged to
the extent that, international observers had to complain very bitterly
about the electoral fraud. It is very important to note that; first,
militarization means the application of a great deal of coercion to
democratic process. Order and conformity are maintained not so much
through consensus as through violence and fear. The conformity thus
achieved is confused with consensus; a leadership out of touch with its
people has no chance of remedying this handicap. It goes on perpetrating
all of arbitrariness on the people in the name of the people as the
society divides into two hostile camps which are increasingly unable to
communicate. From the point of view of the society at large, the salient
political features of militarization are as follows: there is no
expression of popular interests and no mobilization of their consensus
and there is no accountability of leadership.
The implication of this is very glaring, if
development is to mean anything at all, it must mean the development of
their potentialities. But development is not really possible if it not
participative. External agents may facilitate this process but they
cannot, even with the best of intentions, consummate it; in the final
analysis a people develops itself through its own exertions or not at
all. Where development is not participative it can only be the
development of alienation and domination.
It is therefore, with joy and gladness that
I received the news of the victory over military dictatorship in ANPP,
more so, that the country went through hell in the hands of the military
jackboot in question, as the reign of terror and the iron law of
oligarchy were visited upon the people through decree two and four in
1984. Hence, it is good news that the civilian has successfully taken
back ANPP from the military and the challenge is now for the PDP to do
the same.
By
Jide Ayobolu
No 19 Gongola Street
Garki 2
Abuja-Nigeria.
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