It is only by the exigencies of political expediency that old foes could find a common ground even if such co-operation would be temporal. The recent posthumuos national honours which President Buhari conferred on Chief M.K.O. Abiola, the presumed winner of the annulled June 12, 1993 presidential election, and Chief Gani Fawehwemi, a celebrated legal/human rights activist, strongly bespeaks of this fact of political expediency in the face of a President’s dire need of political survival strategies for his re-election bid come 2019.
We are very familiar with this strategy in our national politics. Shortly after Independence in 1960, the political antagonism between the political leaders of the ruling Northern Peoples Congress and the main opposition-the Action Group, paved the way for the collapse of the first republic, and the country’s eventual relapse into a bloody civil war. The two political parties were fundamentally regional parties, with their support base resting on the traditional socio-cultural cleavages of their respective regions.
Today, another moment of national politics beckons with very confusing outlook, necessitating politicians to reexamine their thoughts, permutations and preferences. President Buhari and his power bloc cannot be insensitive to the prevailing reality
In the ruling party’s determination to decimate the Action Group and its outstanding opposition, different strategies were deployed. The Mid-Western Region was carved out from the Western Region with a view to reducing Action Group and Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s sphere of influence. Chief Ladoke Akintola was supported against Chief Awolowo’ s leadership of the Action Group and eventually Chief Awolowo was arraigned and sentenced to prison on the charges of treason and treasonable felony.
It must be acknowledged that masters of the game of politics never undermine the strength and capacity of their opponents. Such virtues are constantly kept in view so as to be properly checkmated when interests are irreconcilable, and adequately harnessed, when the situation transforms and interests converge, paving the way for co-operation rather than competition.
As Nigeria boiled in the face of her self-inflicted civil war, political permutations transmuted and coalesced. New alliances became expedient in strategic response to the new lines of thinking. This was how the same class and political bloc that presented and jailed Chief Awolowo as ‘a mischievous felon’ became the ones that released him from Calabar Prison, granted him state pardon and celebrated him with a guard of honour, mounted at the Ikeja Airport to welcome him home.
Awo, as he was fondly called, was later appointed Vice Chairman of the Supreme Military Council and the Federal Minister for Finance. It was all about securing the co-operation of the West against the East and dealing with Colonel Emeke Ojukwu’s belligerent and intransigent disposition towards the Federal Government under General Gowon’s leadership. Chief Awolowo delivered and the calculation paid off for Gowon and his masters. Whatever became of this alliance of strange bed-fellows at the end of the civil war, your guess should be as good as mine.
After the civil war and under a period of prolonged military rule, the country passed through another political transition which culminated in the return to civil rule in 1979. The National Party of Nigeria was a regrouping of NPC elements but without Sir Ahmadu Bello and Alhaji Tafawa Balewa. The two great leaders were very unfortunate victims of the January 1966 failed military coup. The UPN was a reincarnation of the Action Group still under the leadership of the brilliant and politically infectious Chief Awolowo, while the NNP was a rebirth of the NCNC and was still led by the oratorical Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe.
In 1979, history repeated itself. NPN won the presidential election narrowly and after a tightly fought legal battle with the UPN, and like in 1959 when the NPC won the federal election but needed to form the Government and which it found in the NCNC, the NPN had to seek and secure an alliance with the NPP, to have a firm control of the National Assembly and the government at the centre. The alliance ceded the position of Speaker of the House of Representatives to the NPP while Chief Awolowo and his Action Group were pushed back into their position of main opposition, just as it was in the first republic. The political battle of 1979 was fought on the controversy of what constituted the 2/3 of 19 states.
In politics, the enemy never surrenders; he merely capitulates to buy time. So, the battle of 1979 was pushed to 1983 with new calculations and strategies. This time, the North went back to the East. President Shehu Shagari and the NPN-led Federal Government had to avoid the ‘2/3 of 19’ controversy of 1979. So the party needed to secure more states and they had to turn to the East and the Mid-West then known as Bendel State. The master stroke for the battle for the East was unconditional pardon for Odimekwu Emeke Ojukwu who led Biafra against Nigeria. The same people who presented Ojukwu as a rebel turned around to celebrate him as a hero because they needed him as a political tool for their 1983 agenda. Ojukwu was used and dumped; even his ambition to come to the Senate was blocked.
Today, another moment of national politics beckons with very confusing outlook, necessitating politicians to reexamine their thoughts, permutations and preferences. President Buhari and his power bloc cannot be insensitive to the prevailing reality. They must act swiftly or lose vital grounds. The killings in the middle belt and parts of north-east will no doubt seriously jeopardise the bloc’s chances in those parts of the country in 2019. The handling of Nnamdi Kanu and his Indigenous People of Biafra by PMB was in itself a fatal political blunder. In dealing with the situation, PMB and his political associates could not comprehend that Biafra is still a phenomenon on which the solidarity of the Igbo of eastern Nigeria would be readily mobilised.
Surely, many in the region did not agree with Kanu’s approach but would agree with his message any day. Secondly, they ought to have come to terms with the fact that Kanu has achieved for himself, a great measure of cult followership and very dangerous street popularity. They forgot that it was this type of popularity among the northern plebeians more than any other factor that informed PMB’s choice as the standard bearer of the coalition against President Goodluck Jonathan. Asiwaju Bola Tinubu christened it ‘common sense revolution’.
The South-South has remained an unwilling partner in this project and even the just introduced Adams Oshiomohle factor would not make much difference. So, the natural place to turn to is the South-West. However, it is left to be seen the extent a posthumuos recognition for Chief M.K.O Abiola and Chief Gani Fawehwemi would mobilise the West for PMB.
*Akaeze, a renowned historian and political thinker, writes from Asaba, Delta State.
