When the 10th National Assembly (NASS) resumes after the inauguration of the new president on May 29, most of the current members of the Senate and House of Representatives in both the red and green chambers of NASS would be strangers.
That is because a significant number of members of the outgoing assembly, who represent the old order would have gone with the winds, as they have become victims of what l would like to term, ‘Obi-Dients Effect’.
As the political whirlwind that swept across the country, particularly in the South, with more disruptive effects in the South-East, South-South and South-West, as well as a significant swathe of the North Central geo-political zone, took its toll; politics as we used to know it has been upended in the voting bases of most members of the old political order.
Hitherto, as a commentator, l had been drawing the attention of members of the Obidient Movement (which is a third force making waves in the political space), to the fact that they were handicapped based on the reality that they had no political structure.
That is underscored by the fact that universally, without structures which are the bulwark of political parties, public office seekers hardly succeed in their quest. It is one of the reasons that even in the almighty United States of America, USA, which is the melting pot of democracy and where independent candidacy is allowed, only one independent candidate has ever become president and that is Mr George Washington.
Yes, President George Washington, the first and two times US president, is the only independent candidate to date that has won the US Presidency. And on both occasions, George Washington unanimously received all the votes of the electoral college.
That is according to reports by scholars, which are documented in US archives:
“In both the election of 1789 and 1792, Washington received all votes from the Electoral College. During the first election, Washington won the electors of all ten eligible states. In 1792, Washington received all 132 electoral votes, winning each of the fifteen states, without belonging to any of the major political parties.”
Thereafter, in 1992 and 1996, the billionaire Texas Instruments owner, Mr Ross Perot, also unsuccessfully vied for the office of the president of the USA as an independent candidate.
Another politician, who attempted to become president in the US in 2016 as an independent candidate and failed, is Mr Evans McMullin.
Billionaire Perot and Mr McMullin failed to make it into the Oval Office in the White House, simply because they had no structure, which only well-established political parties can offer.
Incidentally, what just played out in the current election season in Nigeria had happened in the US in 2016 when owing to the lack of popularity of the two traditional and major parties candidates, Senator Hillary Clinton of the Democratic Party and the billionaire property tzar, Mr Donald Trump of the Republican Party, provided a window for Mr McMullin to record the highest performance by non-Republican or Democratic Party candidates in over two decades in US politics.
Co-incidentally, a scenario similar to the one painted above got replicated here in Nigeria during the February 25, 2023, presidential and National Assembly elections, as the unpopularity of the candidates of the ruling APC Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and main opposition PDP, Wazirin Atiku Abubakar, amongst the youth population that are desperately seeking a change from the old to a new order, threw up Mr Peter Obi, who ran on a platform of no significance, but who embodies the aspirations of the youths.
What the narrative above indicates is that structures matter in politics because, without them, candidates vying for the presidency of any country do not get their goals accomplished. That is why the likes of Professors Pat Utomi and Kingsley Moghalu, who are renowned intellectuals of no mean stature that are eminently qualified to lead our country, contested for the office of president at various times on the platform of fringe parties that had no structure to be reckoned with, failed spectacularly and embarrassingly.
The same situation applies to media entrepreneurs and journalists, Mr Omoyele Sowore and Bashorun Dele Momodu, who had also thrown their hats into the ring, signifying their intentions to become the president of our great country, Nigeria, but have serially failed to realise their ambition.
But in rather uncanny ways, Mr Peter Obi’s case has been better than the previous attempts by the quartet earlier highlighted in the manner that Reverend Jesse Jackson, a black rights activist, who contested for the presidency of the USA on several occasions on the platform of fringe parties that are structureless, became the forerunner to Mr Barack Obama, who achieved the feat of becoming the first and only black man to attain the position of the 44th president of the US.
The reason Jesse Jackson failed and Barack Obama made it into the White House is basically because, while the former vied for the office without a structured platform, the latter contested on the platform of an established party with a very sturdy platform – the Democratic party.
At the onset of his quest for the presidency of Nigeria, after he exited PDP, just before the primary in May and joined the relatively unknown and structureless Labour Party (LP), Mr Peter Obi was looking like an independent candidate.
Hence, l kept raising the concern about the jeopardy that he would face by running for the office of president without doing so on solid political structures.
But going forward, the LP Presidential standard bearer has shed that toga of being structureless, because LP has, owing to its tenaciousness and resourcefulness, resulting in its resounding success in the current election cycle, built the structures which we had been calling the attention of Obi-Dients to, and a critical factor which Mr Obi and his team appeared to have been treating with contempt.
As can be seen from the narrative above, the prognosis that the LP and Mr Obi would not be the party and the person respectively that President Muhammadu Buhari would be handing over the reins of government to on 29 May, is but a figment of imagination, based on a close study of the presidential system of democracy in the clime where the practice originated – the US.
Since our presidential system of government was copied from the US, l had tasked myself with the duty of taking a deep dive into the annals of US practice of the presidential type of democracy, with a view to thoroughly interrogating it in order to figure out what worked and did not work for them.
The self-assignment was accomplished by applying trend analysis. And based on my finding, l concluded that the LP and its presidential candidate, Mr Obi, had vaulting ambition for intending to occupy Aso Rock Villa as the ruling party and the president of Nigeria respectively in the current election cycle without the bulwark of a political structure.
The LP, being a relatively unknown political platform without established political structures and Mr Obi, at that time, being a sort of an unknown political quantity, exhibited the characteristics of independent candidacy as we know it in the US presidential system of government, hence l deemed his aspiration as unrealistic and unachievable since rigging is usually carried out by state actors or the establishment?
For instance, assuming for the purpose of this analogy, the APC actually doctored the results of the election held in the 176,856 polling units, set up by INEC nationwide as alleged, would the feat of rigging have been carried without its structure?
But living in denial publicly, the LP/Obi-Dients had discountenanced our wise counsel by claiming that structures were irrelevant in politics.
Meanwhile, they were privately motivating and recruiting an army of aggrieved Nigerians (mainly the youth of the #Endsars cohort), who, having had enough of bad government, were determined to force a change through a legitimate political process.
As such, it was easy for that highly incensed and energised crop of Nigerians that were willing and ready to get involved in salvaging their beloved country from the leadership morass that they had identified as the bane of their beloved country, Nigeria did not hesitate in serving as volunteer foot soldiers for the LP and its standard bearer, Mr Obi, which culminated into the superlative performance of the hitherto fledgling political party.
In addition to the backing of the angry youths seeking a rebirth of our country, is the heft given to the movement by political intellectuals such as prof Pat Utomi, Mr Donald Duke, Mrs Oby Ezekwesili, and Balogun Akin Osuntokun, amongst others, who were also supported with the statesmanly firepower of ex-president, Olusegun Obasanjo, who l like to refer to as president emeritus because, unlike his predecessors, he appears to be determined not to quit the political stage, hence he keeps meddling in governance.
Equally formidable is the backing from ethnic nationality groups such as the Afenifere-Yoruba sociocultural group, led by Pa Adebanjo, Pan Niger Delta ethnic and cultural group, PANDEF, led by Pa EK Clark, and Middle Belt Forum, the socio-cultural group of people of the north-central zone under the leadership of Dr Pogu Bitrus.
The final icing on the cake that bolstered the chances of the LP and Mr Obi is the boost from the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC – a union comprising of the nation’s civil servants, which comprises a significant number of the nation’s workforce countrywide that agreed to align with the LP in their struggle to replace the old structure with a new one.
The NLC support conferred a more national outlook on the political movement, which had from its humble beginnings coalesced into a rampaging political force.
As it is both remarkable and unprecedented, credit should go to the newly elected NLC leadership under Comrade Joe Ajaero, that made it possible for the LP to receive the total and undiluted support of the NLC, which has an unenviable reputation for always being disagreeable with members of the political class.
Written by Magnus Onyibe
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