‘We must oppose this government’, by Rotimi Fasan

2026-03-04 - 00:57

With the current Nigerian politicians, each week, if not each day, comes with its own drama. After their comprehensive defeat in the Abuja municipal election and the bye-election in Rivers and Kano (and I say this without any sense of triumphalism- I had neither horse in the race nor do I care who won or lost except to the extent that the outcome highlights the ineptitude of the opposition), their next line of action was to come together in open rejection of the newly enacted Electoral Act. To imagine that these people waited all through the legislative stages (first, second, public hearing, etc.) the electoral bill navigated before its passage into law- they sat on their palms and did nothing, no lobbying, no negotiation, even with their own members in the various committees of the National Assembly, only to wake up from their self-induced slumber, struggling to close the stable a week after the horse had bolted and the Electoral Bill had effectively become law. I have said it a number of times and will repeat it again, this is not an opposition that should be taken seriously. They have not done nearly enough to earn the sympathy of Nigerians. While the ruling party was busy staking its claim and clearing the ground in order to entrench itself, courting and welcoming new members into its fold, the opposition remained uncoordinated, only building what it probably calls a strategy around a few individuals whose influence has increasingly diminished as a result of electoral loss, inadequate preparation and mass defections into the ruling party. They are waiting for Nigerians to help them fight a battle they themselves are neither willing nor prepared to fight. They are more interested in merely pointing accusing fingers and finding faults, not offering Nigerians carefully planned alternatives to the programmes, good or bad, being executed by the All Progressives Congress. They have all but given up on the fight for the 2027 election and are only hoping for or waiting to cause some social upheaval that will bring Nigerians to the street. That is the message behind their tired pronouncement about the next election being a contest between the ruling party and Nigerians. The 21 political parties, down to the most moribund of them with no more than their founders, the officials and their families as members- all the parties currently recognised by our laws, are peopled by Nigerians not foreigners. So, no political party, least of all the non-performing opposition parties, has exclusive claim to the support of Nigerians. The opposition should sit up, work hard and stop short-changing Nigerians. Gathering civil society organisations or joining activists and other agitators in streets protests cannot be the acceptable approach for politicians. How does it look when legislators abandon the parliament for the social media, making the rounds of television and radio stations, to protest against laws that went through months of fine-tuning in the legislature before they were passed right under their nose? God knows that there are more than sufficient grounds for the opposition to meaningfully engage the government if they are ready to work. But they are simply waiting to be handed free tickets into public office by Nigerians. They don’t come anywhere close to the government or even the ruling party in terms of the discharge of their duties to Nigerians. To say this is for some Nigerians, especially supporters of the do-nothing opposition politicians, evidence of one’s partiality to the ruling party or sharing in whatever pork President Bola Tinubu and the APC are supposedly using to lure the critical segment of the population to their side. When you criticise the government for the harshness of their reforms, remember the opposition has not offered any credible alternative. Some of these reforms may be yielding positive results already. But who says they cannot be made better or even changed if the opposition would for once go beyond making bland statements about how bad things are or how far ‘gone’ or ‘finished’ the country is? They approbate and reprobate the same policies in the same breath. As the ex-LP presidential candidate recently did with his attack on Abuja for falling food prices. Only a couple of years ago, he condemned the government for starving Nigerians because of high food prices. He is back in a new social media footage attacking the government for the fall in food prices, which he says has pauperised our farmers. Where does this man truly stand on the issue of food inflation, nobody knows? He goes wherever the wind blows, and with no coherence to his message. The issue of how falling food prices may be negatively impacting farmers has been acknowledged by the government well before now. If the Chief Mourner must comment on it, one would expect his contribution to deepen the conversation not repeat what everyone on the street knows. There is no opposition, where Alhaji Atiku Abubakar only makes occasional statements when he’s temporally in town from his base in Dubai- waiting patiently for the party primaries; where Nasir el-Rufai, until he talked himself into trouble, drops in occasionally from Egypt to stir the waters before returning to his base. It is not opposition when Rotimi Amaechi nags Nigerians about the youth not being on the street protesting against the government. All he does when he is on the street is to dispense barefaced falsehood about the government taking 25 percent tax on sales of building materials. At other times, he invades crowded street corners to buy and chew maize among his ‘Nigerian people’. Pray, how is this a useful campaign or opposition strategy? The opposition is again making its usual noise, claiming it has limited time to prepare a comprehensive online register of their members. Is it not awkward that a group demanding ‘real-time electronic transmission’ of election results from INEC cannot put together a register of its own members in one and half months? One whole month fa?! These are Pharisees who heap on others a load they won’t dare to carry. What the opposition is not saying is that beyond their lamentation of time constrain, their so-called parties are mostly elite formations and gatherings with no roots beyond the cities. I will address the issue of party funding and formation which is at the bottom of the opposition complaint, hopefully, next week. But what they are asking for, and which their counterparts in the ruling party know very well because they often row in the same boat, is time to allow them draw up their own fictitious lists of dead Nigerians, local and international celebrities, sports personalities, actors and politicians. It is a game they all play. But this opposition is so obtuse it is incompetent even in its practice of corruption.