2027: Why Seriake Dickson’s NDC can’t be a viable ruling party

Senator Seriake Dickson, founder and leader of the Nigerian Democratic Congress, NDC, and the duo of Peter Obi and Rabiu Kwankwaso, the party’s presidential flagbearer and running mate, are in a marriage of convenience. Obi and Kwankwaso were like a driver in need of a vehicle; Dickson’s NDC was a vehicle in need of a driver. So, the marriage was consummated out of necessity and desperation, not love. But the unsavoury personal and relational dynamics pose serious threats to a stable government were the strange union to produce the presidency in 2027. It would be a child of a dysfunctional marriage.

But before we come to the hypothetical dysfunctionality of an NDC presidency, can the party really produce the president in 2027? Answering that question requires a structural analysis of the party. Keen observers of Nigerian political history would see some parallels between NDC and the Alliance for Democracy, AD, a regional South-West party that attempted to produce the Nigerian president in 1999. Interestingly, Senator Dickson was the first national legal adviser of the AD, and he probably mimicked the party in forming the NDC as a regional Niger Delta/South-South party with aspirations to produce national leadership. There’s also a parallel between the iron grip that AD attempted to have on its elected officials and the anti-defection oath that NDC recently imposed on its aspirants, of which more later.

In 1999, AD formed an alliance with the northern-based All People’s Party, APP, and fielded Chief Olu Falae, a former secretary to the government of the federation and later finance minister, as its presidential candidate, with Alhaji Umaru Shinkafi, a former internal affairs minister, as his running mate. The Falae-Shinkafi ticket lost, polling 11,110,287 votes (37.22 per cent) compared to PDP’s Olusegun Obasanjo, who had 18,738,154 (62.78 per cent). In the National Assembly elections, the alliance won 49 Senate seats – AD, 20; APP, 29 – and 142 seats in the House of Representatives – AD, 68; APP, 74. Put simply, the AD-APP alliance lacked the national reach needed to produce the president and control the National Assembly.

The NDC’s Obi-Kwankwaso ticket is akin to AD’s Falae-Shinkafi duo, an attempt by a minority/regional party to produce the presidency and control the National Assembly without a truly national outlook. But while AD benefitted from being one of the only two parties in the 1999 election, thanks to a de facto national consensus to zone the presidency to the South-West, NDC’s Obi will, come 2027, face Bola Tinubu, from the South-West, and Atiku Abubakar, the only Northern candidate. One doesn’t need a crystal ball to predict that a small party without a strong and broad-based national reach would struggle in a presidential race, just as AD did in 1999, despite the formidable Falae-Shinkafi ticket, and just as NDC may do in 2027, despite fielding the powerful duo of Obi and Kwankwaso.

Of course, Obi’s rambunctious supporters, “Obidients”, would counter that he transcends political parties and has enough national recognition and popularity to win the presidency in a free and fair election. But winning is one thing; governing is another. Assuming Obi wins the presidency next year, how would he run the country without the National Assembly? In 2023, Obi pulled off a miraculous feat by securing 6,101,533 votes nationally and winning 12 states. But his party, Labour, won only eight of the 109 seats in the Senate, and 34 of the 360 seats in the House of Representatives. Why didn’t Obi’s popularity translate into significant parliamentary seats for his party? The truth is, while a presidential candidate’s popularity and charisma are indispensable factors in elections, in the end it takes a strong national party, with a powerful machine and a formidable nationwide grassroots structure, both to produce the president and control the National Assembly. NDC is simply not that party!

So, that’s the first reason NDC can’t be a viable ruling party next year. Even if there is a theoretical possibility that Obi and Kwankwaso could surpass the 6,101,533 votes and 1,496,687 they respectively secured in 2023 and win the presidency in 2027, how many seats can NDC win in the Senate and in the House of Representatives? Some would argue that Nigeria is not a parliamentary system where a prime minister can only remain in office if his party controls the parliament. Yes, but it’s utterly delusional to think that a president whose party has only ten out of 109 seats in the Senate and only 52 out of 360 seats in the House of Reps can run the country without a debilitating gridlock. Granted that some legislators would defect to the ruling party, the defections required to achieve a majority to govern would induce the level of corruption that would destroy the credibility of an Obi presidency. So, an NDC government would either be unable to govern or would be utterly corrupt to do so.

Which is why it’s bizarre that NDC recently compelled all its aspirants to legislative offices to swear an anti-defection affidavit. First, the mere idea of an anti-defection oath is an implicit admission by NDC that it can’t win the presidential election next year. Everyone knows that legislators tend to defect to the ruling party, not from it. So, if NDC expects to win next year’s presidential election, why is it concerned about its legislators defecting? Defecting to where? Second, if opposition legislators decided to defect to the ruling NDC to support an Obi-Kwankwaso government, would the party object? If not, it would be guilty of shameless hypocrisy for placing an anti-defection curse on its own legislators. Third, the Constitution prohibits unlawful defections by legislators, so what would NDC’s “legally binding anti-defection affidavits” add, and how would they be enforced? There is no absolute party discipline anywhere in the world, except in communist China and North Korea. NDC would be like the surveillant Big Brother, a fictional character in George Orwell’s novel 1984: Big Brother is watching you! That’s the second reason it can’t be a viable ruling party. 

Well, there’s a third. As a ruling party, NDC would be paralysed by oligarchic rivalries. An NDC presidency would open up major rifts between Senator Dickson, a former governor of Bayelsa State, who prides himself as founder and leader of the party, and a President Obi, who is not known to operate within party structures and who, in any case, would insist that, as president, he’s the leader of the party. Of course, the rifts would be fuelled and exacerbated by Obi’s uncontrollable, cult-like followers, “Obidients”, who would see Obi’s victory as solely his, and give NDC the middle finger, not the party’s V sign!

That’s not an exaggeration. Senator Dickson’s recent interview with Charles Aniagolu on Arise TV was a seminal moment. Dickson was calm until Aniagolu remarked that he needed Obi to lift his party. Senator Dickson sat up, adjusted himself, and said with a stern voice: “I could have run; nobody is more qualified than me to run for the presidency of Nigeria; none! So, don’t make it look like anyone is doing NDC a favour. No one is. Rather, the NDC and I are doing people a favour by granting our platform to them.” Then, he went on to chide Obi’s supporters: “You cannot be supporting Peter Obi and be disparaging me, the leader and the platform itself. That’s nonsensical,” adding matter-of-factly: “If it were easy for people to form a party, go and form yours.” Aisha Yesufu, the arch-Obidient, fired back. In a tweet, she accused Senator Dickson of being “insecure and in competition with” Obi.

But that’s what happens in a marriage of convenience: ingratitude! Dickson repeatedly said he “offered” NDC to Obi. Yet, Obi and his followers have no intrinsic loyalty to the party, just as they had none to Labour. Special-purpose vehicles are used and dumped; hence they can’t produce a functional presidency or become a viable ruling party. Like Dickson’s NDC!

*Dr Fasan is the author of ‘In The National Interest: The Road to Nigeria’s Political, Economic and Social Transformation’, available at RovingHeights bookstores.

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