BY LADIPO ADAMOLEKUN
THE only permissible restrictions would be the maintenance of peace and national security with operational guidelines that are widely publicized.
An independent judiciary which guarantees the rule of law, regulating relationships among citizens and those between citizens and the state. Normally, there would be a Basic Law (Constitution) which enshrines both fundamental human rights and the independence of the judiciary in addition to specific provisions on the institutions of governance.
In a multi-religious society, consensus politics would only be practicable if the secularity of the state is enshrined in the Constitution.
These five distinguishing features of consensus politics would merit further elaboration and refinement.
What is the basis of political party competition in the country today? There is neither a Progressive/ Conservative divide nor a Left/Right divide – the most common distinction among competing parties in the majority of modern democratic politics. When the Action Congress refers to itself as a “Progressive” party, it implies that the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) (AC) is a “Conservative” party. And the advertised alliance between the AC and the All Nigerian People’s Party (ANPP) implies that the latter, too, is a progressive party. However, given the composition of the leadership groups of the three main parties and their antecedents – where they were in Babangida’s decreed two-party political arrangement and within the five parties that unanimously adopted maximum ruler Abacha as sole presidential candidate – it is difficult to meaningfully assign either the progressive or conservative tag to any of them.
The changing of political allegiances by many political actors among the three parties since mid-2006 further underscores this point. Equally revealing is the close to zero trade union experience of most of the gubernatorial candidates who claim to represent the Labour Party while the immediate past charismatic leader of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) is an AC gubernatorial candidate.
It is against this background that one can confidently assert that the primary concern of the vast majority of our political actors is how best to win political power and use it to secure access to the available national resources. Ideology or principles are irrelevant and the mobilization of citizens for political participation is not an issue – party cards are purchased for them and their votes are to be obtained in exchange for ridiculous cash and/or food items. As in 1999 and 2003, whichever group wins control of the central government in 2007 is likely to proceed to adopt a zero-sum winners-take-all approach to governance. State governments that are controlled by parties that are different from the ruling party at the national level will be treated as “opposition” to be shut out of even constitution-guaranteed share of national resources, to the extent possible. In its magnanimity, the ruling party at the centre could select political actors from a few “opposition” parties to join the “mainstream” – to come to the table to “eat”!
Given the lack of significant differences in the policies and programmes in the different manifestoes that have now been released by the political parties, would it not be better for them to agree on coalition governments at both the central and state levels? This would mean allocating a percentage (25 – 33 percent?) of the positions in governments in proportion to the percentage of votes won by the different minority parties. This arrangement would need to be formalized through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) agreed upon in advance by the leadership of the relevant parties. The MOU would, among other things, include a statement of the core principles, policies and programmes that the coalition governments will agree to implement. The threshold for participation in coalition government could be set at 25percent of votes at the national level and 10% at the state level. Minority parties that would not wish to participate in coalition governments would be free to continue to mobilize support for principles and policies that are different from those of the parties involved in coalition governments. It is conceivable that one, two, or more election cycles down the line, such parties could win control of governments in some states.
It is noteworthy that some of the civilian governments at the national level from the 1950s to the mid-1960s were national or all-party coalition governments, that is, without an official “opposition”: a national government from 1952 to 1954; coalition of all three major parties from 1957 to 1959; and an all-party coalition from 1965 to January 1966.
A survey of governmental systems in modern states would show that a government and opposition system only functions smoothly where there is a national consensus on core values and societal goals (for example, Britain, France and Germany) in contrast to countries that are characterized by deep ethnic, racial, religious and linguistic divides which tend to opt for coalition governments (for example, Austria, Belgium and Switzerland). The countries concerned have, through coalition governments, enjoyed peace, security, and good development performance over many decades.
Of course, there are occasional tensions and crises within coalition governments but they get resolved through changes among majority/minority partners. It is also pertinent to mention that countries committed to a government and opposition system establish coalition (national) governments comprising all major parties during periods of national emergency like the depression years of the 1930s and during the Second World War years and the immediate post-War years (for example, Britain and France for varying periods).
In Nigeria, where a “civilianized” president who endlessly affirms his total commitment to national unity is also a champion of “do or die” elections, a government and opposition system cannot function smoothly. It is significant that the entire leadership of the PDP has echoed the “do or die” mantra. For the president and other PDP leaders, all the other parties are “enemies” to be defeated by every means possible. Wouldn’t a formal adoption of multi-party coalition constitute a better alternative to “do or die” politics in a context in which party policies and programmes are very similar? As was the case in 1957 when speeding up the decolonization process was declared a national emergency that a national (coalition) government had to tackle, the drive towards a prosperous Nigeria by 2020 could also be declared a national emergency that three successive coalition governments over a 12-year period might help us accomplish.
One obvious danger of opting for coalition governments in the prevailing circumstances in Nigeria is the almost inevitable emphasis on the politics of sharing spoils of office among the political elites (“sharing the national cake”) to the neglect of growing the economy and fighting poverty. Although there was no alternation between government and opposition at the regional levels in the 1950s and early 1960s, political competition was real (for example, AG majority versus NCNC minority in Western Region and NPC majority versus NEPU minority in Northern Nigeria) and this helped ensure grassroots political mobilization, some progress in the apprenticeship to democratic politics, and fairly decent development performance. Therefore, states or geopolitical zones in which there is broad consensus on core societal values, goals and objectives could, if they wish, operate a government and opposition system.
