A COALITION THAT UPLIFTS

By Nick Dazang

On Tuesday, 20th March, 2025, two days after President Bola Ahmed Tinubu declared a state of emergency on beleaguered Rivers State, opposition political parties and politicians addressed a press conference.

As to be expected by protocol, the pre-eminent politician in attendance, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, spoke on behalf of the opposition political parties. He used the opportunity of the press conference to announce that the opposition political parties had formed a coalition to unseat President Tinubu in 2027. He said:”Yes, this is the birth of the coalition of opposition ahead of 2027”.

When one considers that the thrust and theme of the conference at issue was the state of emergency declared on Rivers State, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s announcement comes across as perfunctory, tangential or even as an afterthought.
His rather casual and off-handed approach contrasts with the muscular and compelling manner the opposition political parties have engaged with the governing

All Progressives Congress(APC) and the Tinubu administration in the past two years. Thanks to the opposition’s reasoned and cogent interventions, among others, the Tinubu administration has been kept on its toes.

The opposition’s haphazard approach in this matter is deeply concerning. There was no elaborate explanation as to the coalition’s modus operandi and agenda other than to unseat President Tinubu in 2027. What is even more concerning is that our checkered history, especially from the First and the Second Republics, shows that coalitions and alliances seldom work. They are hardly sustained for the long haul beyond the immediate, desperate or opportunistic need to oust a government deemed to be formidable. In fact, most of the time, they are a helter-skelter coming together of strange ideological bedfellows or personalities. Besides, the enterprise is not often driven by any high-minded considerations(s) other than the desire to capture power and to do so for its sake only.

Politicians, like artistes and movie stars, have frail and bloated egos. Some are narcissistic. One of the banes of our coalitions is the tendency of our politicians to refuse to abandon their over-sized egos at the door. They latch onto it until it proves to be their, and our, undoing.
Additionally, and in our clime, coalitions come dead on arrival because the politicians refuse to set aside their ambitions or to defer to some higher ideal. It is always about the self and what is in it for them.

What seems to have worked in our experience, and to have worked precariously and uncertainly, is the merger of the five political parties ahead of the 2015 General Elections. Recall that the Action Congress of Nigeria(ACN); Congress for Progressive Change(CPC); All Nigeria Peoples Party(ANPP); All Progressives Grand Alliance(APGA); and the newPDP (nPDP) merged together to form the All Progressives Congress(APC). It was on the platform of the APC that General Muhammadu Buhari(as he then was) defeated former President Good luck Jonathan of the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) in 2015.

Yet what Nigeria needs at this most challenging time is not a replication of the APC with its baggages nor its shenanigans. The APC, from its decade-long helmsmanship, has exuded an utter lack of direction and an incomparable rudderlessness. Incompetence, wanton corruption, granite-hearted ness and haughtiness have been its hallmark and standard operating procedure(SOP). Little wonder, Nigeria today is not only in one of its direst straits, it is at the brink of state failure.

A viable coalition or merger must thus be an anti-thesis to, and one that departs radically from, the APC variety. It must be informed by an agenda that is pan-Nigerian and that seeks quickly to lift the country from the cesspool of corruption and rank incompetence. It must articulate a vision that puts Nigerians first and seeks to put Nigeria in the comity of First Nations. The welfare of all Nigerians must come before members of the political class who serve it.

A genuine and true coalition must address what ail us: the woeful failure of governments at the federal and state levels to deliver good governance to the people; the failure of the system to build world class infrastructure and its inability to deliver educational and health facilities that are in the finest fettle.

The coalition must address our tendency to trust our affairs, not with the first eleven, or the best and the brightest, but with the eleventh eleven and the most inept. It must address squarely why the highest bidder flies the ticket of a political party and “wins” an election to the detriment of the person of proven ability, integrity and savvy.
The coalition must sound the final death knell on godfatherism in the political space. It is this ungodly and untoward tendency that has embattled Rivers State and brought it to this sorry pass.
The coalition must insist on laying premium on service rather than the feathering of one’s nest using the instrumentality of the state and its perks. It must make it impossible for the buccaneers among us to hold office and to use same to proceed on a stealing spree of the public till.
The coalition must put guardrails against its members whose pre-occupation is not sublime or intended to salvage the country. It must stop in their tracks those among it whose obsession is vengeance and the settling of personal scores. It must also frustrate those among it who have made storied careers as ethnic and religious bigots and who are most likely to sully and besmear it by propagating same, using the coalition as a platform.

Unless the coalition invests itself with what edifies the country and propels it forward, ours shall only be a Sisyphusean affair: All our efforts will be futile, repetitive and come to nought.