…Says there must be opposition whether within or outside
By Kelvin Obambon
A political analyst, Dr Efio-Ita Nyok, has said that implosion in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) ahead of the 2027 general elections is imminent in view of the caliber of people who have defected to the party recently.
Nyok who holds a Ph.D in political philosophy, in this exclusive interview with The Paradise News at the weekend, says that although there is no visible political party opposition in the state, the opposition, he argues, must therefore emerge within the party in power, drawing insights from Hegelian dialectics.
Below are excerpts of the interview:
Question: With the gale of defections to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), political observers are worried that Nigeria is drifting towards a one-party state. What is your take on this?
Answer: Okay, to respond to the question about whether Nigeria is operating in a one-party state. I think Nigeria is operating in a one-party state. There’s political parties, the interesting thing about political parties is the distinction in ideology.
Manifesting principles, political, cultural, economic principles, social principles, ideologies. The set of ideas that the members of that party subscribe to. And by which they think they can govern society.
Yes, that’s basically what I say ideology. So the ideology gives the party, it’s like a vision. The marching order for the party, the purpose, the sense of purpose and organization.
But in Nigeria, the 17 or 18 political parties we have, they are not even idea-driven political parties. They are just vehicles by which politicians during elections approximate their political ambitions. So if I want to be a member of the House of Representatives for instance now, the next thing that I have to do is to look for a political party.
Why I’m looking for that political party is not because I am convinced. I’m not going to the political party for the purpose of the ideological persuasion that that political party portends. I’m going there because I want to win the election.
So I will be screened, I will be given tickets, I will win the election. If I do not like the party, if I see that I will not win the elections of the party, I will move to another party. Just like some people who contested under PDP in 2023.
You see people leaving. Somebody who contested as a Deputy Governorship Candidate at such echelon, defecting to the ruling All Progressives Congress. You see somebody who was in the Labour Party, who obviously was a leader of the Party in the state. He has moved, he is moving to the All Progressives Congress, probably because of the possibilities, the prospects of winning.
So for me, on that note we do not have a sound party system. So the way Nigeria is now is like this apartment in which we are. It has a parlour, it has a living room, it has a kitchen, it has a veranda, it has a backyard, a corridor and all of that.
It has restrooms, it has a store. So it is the same house. One person may be in the bedroom, another person may be in the parlour, another person may be in the lounge, another person may be even inside the parlour, another person may be in the dining aspect of the parlour, another person may be in the restroom, another person may be in the kitchen and all of that.
But all of them are in that same apartment. So when you want to describe that apartment, I am going to say this is one apartment. Everybody comes from that apartment.
So Nigerian partisan politics is a monolithic order. Where some people are in the bedroom of that order, other persons are in the parlour of the order, some people are in the backyard, maybe those who are not in power. They may be in the backyard, they may be in the room hiding, waiting for an opportunity for them to come out and be in the parlour.
You know? So you cannot say that of all the people who are in that apartment, that they are in different apartments. They are in one apartment. So it is a matter of those in the parlour are those in the ruling party. That’s why I cannot say that Nigeria has opposition political parties.
Question: Do you think there’s any opposition in Cross River?
Answer: No. There’s no party opposition in Cross River. The PDP has not come up to tell us that we disagree with Governor Bassey Otu’s people first mantra. Labour Party has not come up to tell us that we disagree with your people’s first.
Other parties, Zenith Labour Party, Justice Party, Freedom Party, all of those other parties, all of them, majority of what they say is that we are comfortable with the people’s first mantra of his Excellency, Governor Bassey Otu. They are not supposed to be comfortable with it.
They are supposed to oppose it. Not oppose it to destroy it, but oppose it to improve it. That is where you now say that they can give suggestions on how the state should move forward.
That’s it. But they don’t. Have you ever heard PDP coming up to give us an alternative? Professor Sandy Onor, the flagbearer for 2023 general elections in the states, I don’t remember him coming up to say that this is what he thinks Governor Otu should do differently from what Governor Otu says he wants to do. Even his running mate has finally jumped ship. She is now in the cozy hands of the All Progressives Congress.
It is to the extent to which they are not comfortable with it, in sync with the ideas, theories, principles of their party, to that extent we say that they are opposition. But for me, I still describe the way I describe their national leaders as alternative. If I cannot win an election, just like the leading Labour candidate who contested for Senate, he could not win in Labour Party. So, he has an alternative party. He has decided to go to an alternative party which is All Progressives Congress. Before now, we have seen gales of defections and we are going to see more of those defections.
That makes it very unfortunate because in a democracy, there is supposed to be opposition. One of the features of a democracy is opposition. Not opposition because the member of the opposition does not like the size of the nose of the other politician in another political party. It is opposition to show the electorate, the voter, the potential voter that I have a better way of doing this. This political party and their ideology is lethargic to address this problem. It is sterile. It cannot address this problem and this is how we can address this problem. This is when we will address the problem. This will be the indicators to show that we have addressed the problem.
This is going to be the person we will put in this office to fix that particular problem. That is how it is supposed to be. But, we do not have any opposition.
But, there is one point, one sentiment I need to echo if you have the time. Because we do not have opposition political parties, there is going to be internal wranglings.
Cut In: Within the ruling party?
Answer: Within the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress. That is what is going to happen.
Cut In: Is that a prediction?
Answer: Yes, that is the prediction.
There will be internal wranglings. During the last eight years of His Excellency, Governor Ben Ayade, there was serious opposition. Not opposition from political parties, but opposition from the press. Citizen journalists, journalists, bloggers, publications were very critical of that administration. And those who were in the system, who were benefiting from the system, they said, no, no, these people are saying nonsense. But recently, we are seeing principal members of that particular administration, principal aides to Governor Ayade, beginning to talk. They are beginning to talk. Some of them are chief of staff. Some of them occupy very important political offices. They are beginning to criticise their former principal. They are criticising the government itself.
Yes, they are criticising the government itself. So that is what is likely to happen. I remember when I heard for that of Saturday that there was going to be a defection, I came on my social media, I had an opinion, I think about six paragraphs. I said, those who are defecting now, will they wait? Will they queue? Can they queue? Can they wait? Or will they overtake? Now, what I was trying to paint, I was trying to anticipate something. If they will be made to queue, there will be no problem. The APC, the ship of the APC will be sailing cosily.
But if they want to overtake and they have the capacity to stir some waters in that particular bit to overtake, it’s going to be a turnaround. This makes me to appreciate the dialectics of this German philosopher, G.W.F. Hegel. He was the one who proposed the idea of dialectics. Where there’s a thesis, there’s an antithesis, and there’s a synthesis. So, the thesis is the status quo. At some point in time, the status quo develops. Some disagreements exist in the status quo that result into an antithesis. And the antithesis and the thesis come into a collision and come up with a new reality, which becomes the synthesis.
You understand? So, in the APC, since we do not have opposition political parties, where everybody is operating in one political monolithic order, there’s likely, in the future, between now and 2027, there’s likely to be a dialectical reality that is going to characterize the APC. Yes, an implosion. Where there’s going to be, in the status quo, an antithesis. And both the thesis, the status quo, and this new reality, will come into a head-on collision to result into a synthesis. Where the synthesis will be different from the character of the antithesis and the thesis. What it will mean, we don’t know.
But this is a theoretical prediction following Hegel’s dialectics, that is likely what is going to happen. Because there must be opposition. Whether within or outside. Yes, there must be opposition.