April 2011 - Centre for Civil Society - University of KwaZulu-Natal

The death of Nigerian progressive politics?
Ike Okonta 23 March 2011
Two weeks before Nigeria's election, Ike Okonta takes aim at progressive
politics in Nigeria - or the lack thereof. He traces the crisis back to the
rule of General Ibrahim Babangida in the 1980s, when universities were
devastated by economic policy.
General Olusegun Obasanjo’s assault on academics in the late 1970s was
the first open attack on Nigeria’s progressives and the idea of university
autonomy in the postcolonial era. Popular student protests, built around
the battle cry of ‘Ali Must Go’, was the robust response. Obasanjo’s
government proved a transitional one and military rule ended two years
later as President Shehu Shagari and the National Party of Nigeria took
office.
However, the emergence of General Ibrahim Babangida in 1985, coinciding
with the rise of a new market-fundamentalist economic and political
project in the United States and the United Kingdom called neo-liberalism
presented this group of Nigerians, whose political and economic outlook is
generally left of the centre, with a complex existentialist challenge. That
they responded to this challenge poorly and tactically instead of adopting
the long view and shaping their strategies accordingly is clearly
demonstrated in the farcical game still playing out in Nigeria as the socalled
‘progressive’ political parties refuse to come together in a coalition
to give the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the ruling party, a meaningful
fight in the April general elections.
The defining element of coalition politics is the willingness of key actors to
put personal ambition in service of a larger goal they consider vital to
national progress and prosperity. Realising that their individual parties
alone cannot make the required impact to dislodge a well-entrenched
ruling party, they agree to a minimum programme reflecting the broad
policy thrust of all parties in the coalition, pool resources and then take to
the field, jointly mobilising the electorate to support candidates presented
by that coalition. Of course that means that only one of them will get to
be president if they take a majority of the votes, but that, in the view of
the classical progressive tradition, is a small personal price to pay
compared to the enormous benefits that would accrue to citizens
nationwide.
President Umaru Yar’Adua’s illness during the last months of 2009 and the
reluctance of powerful elements in the ruling PDP to cede power to Vice-
President Goodluck Jonathan as specified in the 1999 Constitution
unsettled the powerful cabal, composed of conservative politicians drawn
from virtually all parts of the country, that the discredited generals
handed power to after flawed elections that same year.
Successive rigged polls following that ‘army arrangement’ that saw
Obasanjo taking power a second time in May 1999, and the president’s
repressive and abrasive tactics had not given progressive politicians and
their traditional allies in the media, organised labour and the higher
institutions much space for maneuver. But the confusion that attended the
Yar’Adua succession changed all that. Here, at last, was an opportunity to
be ruthlessly exploited by progressives truly hungry for power.
It speaks volumes about the state of Nigerian progressive politics today
that the hero of that important political moment turned out to be the
pastor of a Pentecostal church in Lagos, known more for his regular