Daily Independent (Lagos)
Dan Amor
13 July 2009
column
To say that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is the dominant military-bequeathed party in Nigeria, and other parties are like the women and youth wings of that party, is to underscore the obvious.
But there is something augural about the ceaseless predilection for retired military officers to join the babeldom which their indulgence in the nation's partisan politics has become. By their training and temperament, they are strangers to politics; and this is why our constitutions since independence in 1960 mark them out as praetorian guards of the nation's inviolability. And as warlords who are not experts in the intricate calculus of social engineering, they are bound to be absolutely insular from the daily nuances or jabs of partisan politics. Unfortunately, this is not the case. They have hijacked the PDP from its original founders, and the so-called democratic experiment has turned into ashes in our mouth.
If they had been disciplined enough to allow all stakeholders to have their shots on a level playing field, their needless incursion would have been ignored by all and sundry since they are part of the society. With their implacable disdain for the constitution and the rule of law, these retired Generals who looted our national patrimony have shamelessly taken over the political space with reckless abandon. What we have currently is not a democracy but government of a group of militicians and their apologists. Ironically, the PDP, which sprang originally from the heroic assemblage of the Group of 34 brave politicians who challenged General Sani Abacha's attempt to succeed himself as civilian life president, has been turned into Adolf Hitler's National-Socialist Party. The president, as leader of the party, is the supreme god of the nation.
It might be recalled that no eminent intellectual pedigree could be claimed for Nazism, for which Hegel was too intellectualist, too much a devotee of reason. Whereas Hegel glorified and extolled the State as the "march of God on earth", Hitler glorified, not the state, but the Volksgeist of which the National -Socialist Party was an emanation and he himself the single and unique interpreter. Hitler was not mandated, he incarnated the Volksgeist and the Volk recognized itself and its destiny in him. Nor did the Nazi Party owe anything to the State. Through its obedience to the leader it, too, incarnated the Volksgeist. At the Party Convention at Nuremberg in 1934, Hitler declared: "It is not the State that commands us - it is we that command the State. It is not the State that has created us; it is we who make the State for ourselves". So it is for PDP in Nigeria today.
In fact, their intention is to turn the party into a command structure with a common faith similar to a military command. Like the National -Socialist Party of Germany under Hitler, the PDP would not demand from its adherents that they should be convinced of the rightness of its doctrines but that they should believe in them. To become a "genuine political party", the party must be re-organised to remove features such as "difference in ideologies, rivalry and outright opposition to elected public officials by members of the party". What this means in essence is that, the party, like the Fascist -Nazi type of totalitarianism, must have features similar to those of the communist variant: there must be a direct link, with no interposition, check or intermediary between the supreme leader and the spirit of nationality which he incarnates. That is to say that the supreme deity, assisted by his party, is first among equals, and the line of command must run from top to bottom, down to the lowest rank. At the same time, the organic and monistic principle, whether this is expressed as the supreme moral authority of the State or by the brass hats, must demand the absorption into the party of all "loyal" private associations - schools, universities, trade unions and so forth - inside the state territory to justify a one-party-state structure.
As the party consolidates its powers, as symbol of the State, the government propagates the official myth, the official ideology. It seeks to regiment and has powerful means of doing so. Consequently, the party and its leaders seek to control and operate the mass media with their galaxy of political propagandists who spread falsehood throughout the organized sectors of society. But where regimentation falls short, coercion, even terror, is called upon. As compared with the liberal-democratic States, the totalitarian State being consolidated in Nigeria relies very heavily upon secret and security police forces (see TELL of August 1, 2005).
Since it is the same as the government, the hegemonic party controls the administrative apparatus at all levels from top to bottom. It regiments society and can ignite mass poverty by incessantly increasing the prices of fuel. As a unique force which does not respect the laws of the land, as even its leaders are above the law, the military party has no business recognizing the tenets of federalism. As such, the central government permits state governments no latitude or discretion to govern or manage their affairs independently. It is a limited form of democracy in which the party in power is disciplined in the mould of the army - no factionalism or splitting is permitted, and once a line is laid down, it has to be obeyed by all members on pain of expulsion; and that permeates the whole of society. Furthermore; in political matters, the judges are not independent but are regarded as another state instrument by which the ruling doctrine of the party and its leaders or leader may be realized. There can be no question as to the consequences of the military party taking over the democratic space in Nigeria.
No less a personality than Chairman of PDP's Elders Forum, Major General Ike Nwachukwu (rtd.), observed recently that the Party had jettisoned ideas to embark on an ego trip. What could be more truthful? When a political party assumes the status of the State in a one-party dictatorship, ego becomes the official ideology of the governing elite. In such a situation the judiciary, which is supposed to be the safety valve or sole arbiter for the common man, is relegated to the background as court rulings are disobeyed with reckless abandon. It is because Nigeria is already neck-deep into this one-party dictatorship that almost a month after the Supreme Court ordered the swearing in of Emmanuel Obot as the lawful candidate of the PDP for Uyo Federal Constituency in the April 2007 election, INEC's Chairman, Prof. Maurice Iwu, in collaboration with Justice Minister, Mr. Michael Aondoakaa, has refused to issue him a certificate of return. Even as self-seeking politicians who want to "win" elections by all means and at all costs are defecting from their respective parties to the PDP, where anything is possible, Nigeria is steadily transiting to a one-party dictatorship. It is not yet Uhuru for Nigeria in the comity of democratic nations.
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