by Dr. Sowaribi Tolofari
A POLITICAL party that is not in power plays the opposition role. The opposition role is that of preparing to go into government. This writer has not seen, of all the myriad parties that are registered that are not in government, any one that plays the opposition role. In Nigeria the parties are mostly heard of, or ‘seen’, only during electioneering. Thereafter, they disappear or put themselves on ice for nearly four years, until the next election period. A few big parties assume the role of opposition, that is, they claim to be the opposition, even though they do not play the opposition role.
Nigerian ‘opposition’ parties – Action Congress of Nigeria, Congress for Progressive Change, All Progressives Grand Alliance, All Nigeria Peoples Party – to mention the recognisable ones, appear to think that their role in opposition is to play the role of ‘enemy’ of the government. Thus, what they do, instead of what they should be doing, is for individuals from their ranks to verbally abuse members of the government – from the president, ministers, to other appointees – from time to time, often in the personal capacities of these individuals, “he is a fool, he doesn’t know what he is doing”, “he is a drunken fisherman, dare he talk to me?”, “he/she is a person without pedigree”, “they are talking nonsense”, etc.
This is Nigeria, otherwise, one would depart from the premise that everyone going into politics, presenting himself/ herself for public office, elected, appointed or employed, is doing so with the primary purpose of wanting to serve the people of this country with the view to making their lives better. If that is the case, that people have failed, individually or as a group/party to get into office, should not prevent them from still serving the people.
Another point to make at this juncture is to say that once elections have been concluded and the results have been accepted (when all legal challenges to the election results have been concluded) it behoves everyone – including leaders and members of the parties that have failed to be elected into office – to accord due respect to the persons that hold office, and especially to be able to differentiate their personal lives from public positions when criticising them. Indeed, what should be criticised are the actions and inactions of the individual and not his/ her person.
Politics, one would venture to posit, is a game for gentlemen (and women of course!) It should be considered a game for intellectuals, people of refined mind. Such people are capable of showing respect for even their true enemies, not to talk of political opponents.
It is perhaps the crudity of the manner we play the game of politics here which prevents us from understanding that politics is really just a game of means and approaches, which cannot make the player see his or her opponent as an enemy. If we examine Britain, Sweden or the United States, for example, we would pleasantly find that the national objectives of the advancement of the country – the betterment of the lives of the citizens and the protection of lives and property – never change irrespective of if it is the Labour or Conservative Party (Britain), Social Demokraterna or Modaraterna (Sweden) or the Democrats or the Republicans that are in government. The only difference would be their approaches to achieving these national objectives.
The defence by left and right of their own approaches to achieving the national objectives might lead to frayed nerves sometimes, but there is always respect for each person as an individual and there is always the underlying understanding that they must still work together to achieve the national goals. So, for instance, in Sweden, as the ruling party is preparing the national budget, it discusses the thorny portions with the opposition parties. In the United States, we have seen only this year that President Obama has been calling in leaders of the opposition to dinner and lunch to discuss the thorny parts of the budget.
Rather than taking the stand that the government is an enemy, the opposition party needs to play the true part of the opposition. One hopes that it would be easier to come to this understanding now with the merger and the formation of a new, bigger and stronger party that would form the opposition. Playing the opposition role firstly, and above all else, means putting the general populace, the people of Nigeria, as the centrepiece of your politics, serving them while you are in opposition and preparing to serve them in government.
They have to know. Serving the people while you are in opposition demands that you constructively criticise the actions of the government. The art of positive criticism also includes making suggestions to the government; in the same manner you would make suggestions to friends and relations, not in a derisive, condescending manner.
As a party in opposition, you are preparing to go into government. You cannot go into government if all your campaign, all you have to offer, is hinged around the slogan “their turn don pass, make dem komot”, or “they don’t know what they are doing, they should go, we will take over”. It is crucial that you address yourself to the public of Nigeria – ever more politically sophisticated now – and show them how you would be better at making their lives better, more meaningful, less miserable; how the rule of law would reign under your own governance.
To start with, this writer would like to see a Nigerian opposition that has a shadow government. First, it shows that the party is organised. In Britain they call it the ‘shadow cabinet’ and the spokespersons for the various departments are called ‘shadow ministers’. In Sweden they are called ‘spokespersons’. The Nigerian opposition, let’s call it the All Progressives Congress, should have a spokesperson who would be the opposite number of each of the ministers the government has – finance, agriculture, education, health, industry, communication, petroleum, internal affairs, defence, etc. The party leader cannot speak, often without substance, on every subject. The shadow minister or spokesperson for agriculture should have as much, if not better knowledge of the state of our agriculture and how it should be, than the current minister. He or she should exchange ideas, civilly, with the current minister of agriculture from time to time. And he or she should be able to show Nigerians how the state of our agriculture would be better if their party takes over government after the next election. Ditto for defence, education, etc.
This will show that the party has the intention, capability and preparation to address the different issues that face the society. It would be evidence that should the party be in power today, it could address itself to those issues as they affect the lives of Nigerians.
The second thing an effective opposition party would do is to plan for the country. Frankly, in the mind of this writer, government has only three purposes: first, to harness the resources the country has and to manage them in such a way that the optimum benefit comes to the individual members of the society; second, to secure and protect the lives and properties of the citizens of the country wherever in the world they may be; and third, to strive daily to find how to do the first and second better.
To achieve these purposes, the government has to envision a standard of living and comfort for its populace and plan how to achieve it, envision the best possible means of protecting the citizens and their property and how to achieve it, and continuously come up with new and better ways of doin
g these things. The party in opposition must also have its vision and plans, because being in opposition means preparing to go into government and this would be its responsibility today were it today in government. The opposition cannot start planning only when it has come into government. The practice of governance has to be ongoing when the party is in opposition.
The vision, plans and methods for achieving these purposes, the best ways to harness the resources the nation has and how to prioritise the allocation of resources to the myriad functions that would help to achieve these purposes would normally constitute the difference between one party and another. Parties with opposing views or even ideologies need not fight or take the stance of enemies just because of this.
The basic plan for the business of government is the budget, generally expressed in monetary terms for a fixed period, usually one year. Therefore, the opposition party must also compose, publish and defend its own annual budget to the public. Luckily, government budgets are not like family budgets that will only tell us how much to spend on what. The government budget explains the reasons for the votes and the objectives each allocation is intended to achieve. The reasons and objectives derive from the vision and policies of the government (or party) making the budget.
From what was recently reported, at the launch of a book he co-authored, Bola Tinubu, the leader of the Action Congress of Nigeria, which is now merging with the CPC and APGA to form the All Progressives Congress, said:
“Just a few weeks or months ago, the Federal Government said we have $46billion in foreign reserve, earning about one or two per-cent in interest. $46 b of Nigerian money is held in foreign reserve, earning two per-cent and they have $42b in domestic debt, which government is paying 16 per cent interest on. These are facts. You have $46 b in foreign reserve, you are earning two percent and you borrow from these foreign investors, tagged domestic borrowing and you are paying 16 per cent. This is voodoo economics. They don’t know it. Get rid of them.”
Apart from picking issues with the overall economic policy of the present government, Tinubu also picked issues with the government’s industrial policy, financial policy, agricultural policy, youth development and labour market policies.
As leader of a party in opposition, Tinubu had an opportunity to show Nigerians how different his economic, industrial, agricultural, financial and youth development policies would be if his party were in government today. He should have expounded his party policies, quoted from his party’s policy documents, quoted from his party’s alternative national budget to that of the government, and shown Nigerians how their lives would be better today if his party was in power. That is what the opposition does.
A vital opposition is necessary for democracy to work and to develop in the country. It is in the interest of the country as a whole, especially the ordinary people, that the opposition plays its role well, that the opposition gives them a choice – if possible, a clear choice – when they go to the polling boots.
The way that the populace would get this benefit is to have intelligent, well-read shadow ministers or spokespeople expound the opposition’s policies on the different issues that would affect their lives, for the opposition to present an alternative national budget that would show, for example, how much they would spend on security and how that would make the population in the north safe from Boko Haram, and in the south from armed robbers and kidnappers; how much they would spend on education and how it would achieve the objective of our graduates being able to build our roads and bridges, or even spell their own names correctly!
We hope that the APC would be able to play a proper opposition role so that our democracy will develop and Nigerians will have a choice.