Nigeria’s politics is about the acquisition of political power, not to serve the people, but for self-service, for the primitive accumulation of capital. In an incisive article, our recently deceased mentor, Dr. Segun Osoba, correctly identified 1952 as the critical threshold in the naissance of the Nigerian ruling class. That was the year a “Nigerian power elite” came into power and
“All the governing parties, committed to a ‘free enterprise’ economic system, used their control of fiscal policies in the regions and in the centre to create conditions favourable to the evolution of a Nigerian capital-owning class.”
From that time on, the government awarded contracts to Nigerians with connections to the power elite. This pivot broke the monopoly of European and Levantine firms previously enjoying a monopoly on major contracts. The next step was the systematic expropriation of peasant surpluses through the marketing board system, done either directly by the state or indirectly via the licensed buying agents’ system. Other methods were real estate deals, government and bank loans for Nigerian businessmen and the gradual infiltration of some Nigerians into multi-national corporations.
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In the 1970s, the era of the oil boom, the centre of appropriation shifted from the regions to Lagos, and the scale was also multiplied with the phenomenal increase in petroleum revenues. The consequent rapid growth of public expenditures tended to surpass the capacity of absorption of the nascent Nigerian bourgeoisie in favour of foreign commercial and construction firms. The state therefore had to intervene in their favour with the 1972 Indigenisation Decree, which was further amended in 1977. The roles of banks and development corporations in promoting this indigenisation became even more significant. Thus, in 1978, when the process of party formation for the Second Republic started, Segun Osoba was correct in renaming his 1952 “Nigerian power elite” as a “Nigerian National Bourgeoisie”.
This was the context in which the transition to the Second Republic started in 1978. Maybe the three most important political parties that sought registration were ridiculed, dismissed and denied registration in the short period allowed for party registration, October to December 1978. The first party was the Movement of the People (MOP) led by the radical philosopher and musician, Fela Anikulapo Kuti. He wanted to galvanise the Nigerian youth into a mass movement that would transform government policy into people-centred development. Fela would have turned Nigerian politics into a serious policy debate between the interests of the people and the interests of the “International Thief-Thief Bourgeoisie”. The military was in charge of the transition, and Fela had exposed their corruption. They said he smoked weed and must not get power.
The second party was the Nigerian Advance Party (NAP) of Tunji Braithwaite. He said Nigerians were in deep misery and lived in squalor amongst rats and mosquitoes, which must be eliminated. He was ridiculed as the man of rats and mosquitoes. No one read his manifesto, so Nigerians did not get to understand the serious policy proposals he made about combating mass poverty, improving public health and creating jobs for the youth. Cartoonists had a great time depicting him as the man surrounded by rats and mosquitoes. His party was eventually registered in 1983, but by that time the dame to his political image had been done.
The third party was the “party of truth.” It was called “You Chop I Chop Party” and was led by Akukalia Asika. The party made the argument that all Nigerian politicians were corrupt and sought power for self-gratification. Nigerians should simply accept the principle and ensure the “chopping” was distributed equally. It would have been fascinating to watch policy debates between these three-party leaders on the way forward for Nigeria’s Second Republic.
What happened was that the military registered five parties that were all led by the leaders of the First Republic, whom they had sent packing from power in 1966. The National Party of Nigeria (NPN) was led by Shehu Shagari, Awolowo’s Unity Party of Nigeria, the Nigeria Peoples’ Party of Nnamdi Azikiwe, Aminu Kano’s Peoples’ Redemption Party and the Great Nigeria Peoples’ Party of Waziri Ibrahim were registered.
All five leaders were originally in one political movement known as the National Movement, as the military wanted to establish a single-party “democratic” party, as was the case in most African countries at that time. These leaders had therefore been working together, but they broke up over presidential ambitions as they all wanted the presidency. The founding fathers of the National Movement had systematically woven a coalition from the segmented and disparate fractions that constituted the Nigerian ruling class. In the North, they were able to form what former NPN party secretary, Uba Ahmed, described as a “victorious troika’ of political coalitions around Aliyu Makama Bida, deputy leader of the NPC, Aminu Kano, leader of the NEPU and Joseph Tarka, leader of the UMBC. Zik demanded the presidency as a precondition and left when it was denied. Aminu Kano left when they offered him Publicity Secretary of the party, and Awolowo left when he was offered treasurer (if I remember correctly). Waziri Ibrahim never believed he could get leadership from the group and never took them seriously.
The political project of the NPN was not different from that of the You Chop I Chop party. It was the development of a national system for the distribution of the ‘national cake’. That cake refers to federally generated resources made available for political appropriation by the Nigerian state.
The leaders of the NPN never abandoned the idea of single-party rule. They set out to destabilise the other parties that had left them. They funded factions in the NPP, PRP and GNPP. The most terrible thing they did was to use state power to declare the illegitimate factions they secretly supported as the legitimate, officially recognised ones. In the inaugural campaign rally of the NPN for the 1983 elections, President Shagari declared, “You cannot defeat the NPN. Join the NPN”. They made it clear that there would be no viable opposition after the elections. The opposition, however, remained mobilised and fought on. NPN became very concerned that it could not break Awolowo’s UPN. They developed what was known as the Omoboriowo plan in Ondo to take over the gubernatorial power by force. As the Babalakin Commission discovered, the Nigeria Police Force, the National Security Organisation, today DSS and party thugs rigged the election by declaring fictitious votes for the NPN. They had massively rigged the elections to take control. They were confronted by a massive public outcry and violence. Nigerians concluded that the elections were not free, fair or credible. The military intervened, and the NPN failed in its political objective of eliminating the UPN, NPP, GNPP and PRP from power. State power has always been ephemeral, and those trying to impose a one-party state in Nigeria today should take time to study the story of the NPN and the Second Republic.
