Mixed reactions have continued to trail the quest by the promoters of a third force to sack the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) during the 2023 general elections.
While some saw the moves by the promoters including a former Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Attahiru Jega, as a welcome development to salvage the country from the alleged failure of the PDP and APC, others doubt the seriousness of the organisers in view of previous attempts.
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Daily Trust reports that there have been calls for a third force following the alleged poor performance of the two major political parties in managing the country’s resources to address the challenges bedevilling the masses.
On Tuesday last week, Jega, Professor Pat Utomi and other Nigerians of diverse professional backgrounds met in Abuja, where they unveiled another third force movement, Rescue Nigeria Project (RNP).
Before then, the National Consultative Front (NCFront) was birthed in 2020 as a third force movement and a coalition against the existing political structure controlled by the APC and PDP.
In 2018, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Chief Olagunsoye Oyinlola, former Governor Donald Duke of Cross River and others launched the Coalition for Nigeria Movement (CNM) with a claim that they had over three million members. After the publicity, it went like previous attempts as the coalition did not make any serious impact on the voting pattern.
Also, a group of presidential aspirants including Prof. Kingsley Moghalu, Dr Thomas Wilson-Ikubese, Omoyele Sowore, Fela Durotoye, Adamu Garba, Ahmed Buhari, among others had vowed to form an alliance against the APC and PDP in the 2019 election.
However, the move collapsed following irreconcilable differences by the promoters with all of them emerging as presidential candidates of different political parties.
Analysts say their interest was only in boosting their resume and not in rescuing the country as they presented themselves.
The birth of RNP
Our correspondents report that 24 hours after the coming of RNP, promoters of NCFront welcomed the development and announced their readiness to fuse all variants of the third force movement including RNP, Nigeria Intervention Movement (NIM), the EndSARS Movement and the yet to be launched Alliance for the Defence of Democracy (ADD), among others into one single formidable political bloc ahead of the 2023 elections.
The National Secretariat of the NCFront, in a statement by its Media Assistant, Yusuf Abdullahi Suleiman, said it was optimistic that the emergence of the RNP will strengthen the rescue agenda they initiated.
Despite the optimism, Daily Trust reports that the history of mergers and alliances in Nigeria’s political firmament had been fraught with failures right from the onset of the present democratic dispensation.
In 1999, the Alliance for Democracy fused with the defunct All Peoples Party (APP) to fight the PDP without success.
In 2007, about 15 political parties came together to form the Action Congress (AC now defunct) but the party was only visible in parts of Southern Nigeria.
Not until 2015 when the APC formed by a merger of about five parties hijacked power from the ruling PDP, alliances for the purpose of attaining political power had always failed.
Revolutionise the country
Speaking with one of our correspondents, one of the promoters of the RNP, Prof. Utomi said the current move was not about party formation.
According to him, all the third force movements were focused on several areas of national life with a view to proffering solutions that would revolutionise the country.
He disclosed that the RNP for instance was focused on setting criteria for the next set of leaders while the Nigeria Consultative Front (NCFront), on the other hand, was focused on the structural challenges.
He said NCFront was ready with a new draft constitution for Nigeria, which would be presented soon.
He added that another group was in the making, which was focused solely on economic policy strategies as “Nigeria has no national economic strategy.”
He said, “What is pushing us is the fact that the country is dying and this is a direct consequence of bad leadership. The need to save Nigeria, you don’t have to explain it to anybody, it is staring everybody in the face.
“In fact, the way Nigeria is, somebody who has never gone to school can tell you he can be an adviser to the president. What do you know?”
Utomi stated that a situation where people fund political parties with public funds must stop.
He said, “Those people can come together and form one party or two parties or they can move into some of the current parties, take them over and reform them. That is the whole strategy but many seem to get carried away by parties. If the focus is to form another party, then you get something closer to what we have presently because what we have presently are Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) of a group of people who have collected public money and are running the parties with public money, which is a crime in most countries but in Nigeria, we get away with everything.
‘Arrangement favours APC, PDP’
An Associate Professor of Political Sociology, University of Abuja, Dr Abubakar Umar Kari, described RNP as an interesting conclave of notable personalities (professionals, the intellectual elite, politicians, among others) united by their often vocal dissatisfaction with the recent happenings in the country.
In an interview, he said most of them have been open critics of the Buhari administration in particular and the existing status quo in general.
“It is an interesting group because it styles itself as an alternative to what we have now in the polity. But then, the RNP is not really a new phenomenon. We have had such groups at every intersection of the country’s political history, with mixed results in terms of impact: some have ended up as mere talk shops, others managed to crystallise into pressure groups, which occasionally took up on governments, while others transformed into formidable political movements or even parties – the PDP and to a certain extent, the APC started that way.
“The RNP is just emerging, so there is a need to watch it closely to see what becomes of it eventually. However, I am a bit intrigued, even disappointed, by the attempt of the group to distance itself from partisan politics. Many may wonder how they can effectively and successfully prosecute the business of rescuing Nigeria by shying away from politics,” he said.
Pointing out that the group will face a daunting task if they tried to displace APC and PDP, he said the present arrangement greatly favoured the two political parties, notwithstanding the crises and cracks tearing them apart.
“Whether the RNP can make an impact in 2023 depends on what they really set out to achieve, how they are able to rally and mobilise support for their agenda and their ability to persuade Nigerians to subscribe to their agenda,” he said.
In a recent interview, a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Ghali Umar Na’Abba said the third force will not fly.
“A third force is very difficult to attain as standard today. For that to be able to work out, it only entails a massive appeal to the people and there must be a deployment of a high degree of material resources, which a lot of people who have been contacted were reluctant, given the nature of the political system.
“Already, distrust has been created by the way and manner the existing political parties have played out in the last 20 years. So, it is of course getting difficult and it appears that the only recourse is for people of good conscience and mind to come into the main party and attempt to reform these parties,” he said.
On his part, Dr Kayode Esuola of the University of Lagos stated that the move “has the potentiality to snowball into a political party and win elections in 2023.
He, however, said that the formation might “Not be able to address Nigeria’s tragedy.
“Like APC in 2015, it can whip up support sentiments from already dehumanised Nigerians but it will like the APC end up compounding the problems and disappointing the masses. Why? Look at the composition of those championing the movement; you will notice it is highly skewed towards those who have benefitted from Nigeria’s contradictions. I can see only a few genuine people-oriented members in the list.”
‘Why movement will fail’
Reacting to the proposed third force, Yusuf Buhari Esq said such associations hardly originate from political consensus or ideology.
“When you interrogate it further, you realise that they are the normal class of privileged elite of Nigerian society who always believe that politics is idealism,” he said.
He added that being made up of non-politicians and idealists, the new association was dead on arrival. Similarly, Obioma Ezenwobodo Esq said he does not see any significance for the formation of the new platform because it is made up of people who were either in APC and PDP.
He added that for them to make an impact they must have a unique difference and they ought to have begun earlier with a clear manifesto.
‘They are not a threat’
The APC and the PDP have said the third force being proposed ahead of the 2023 general elections would not scuttle their chances of winning.
The PDP Deputy National Publicity Secretary, Prince Diran Odeyemi told Daily Trust in a telephone interview that the movement would not make any significant impact in 2023.
“The third forces will not in any way affect the chances of PDP in the 2023 elections. We welcome them and give Nigerians the opportunity to choose. Rather than showcasing the personalities that will form the party, we want to know their principle, their ideology and it will be good to know they are angels,” he said.
Similarly, the Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Yekini Nabena told one of our correspondents that the third force will be inconsequential in the 2023 polls.
“Forces are allowed; it’s about interest but this one is dead on arrival. It is not a threat to APC, it is not a problem. There is nothing to discuss. The APC will win the elections. Anything about 2023, any other party should forget about it,” he stated.
By Ismail Mudashir, Haruna Ibrahim, Saawua Terzungwe, John C. Azu (Abuja) & Abdullateef Aliyu (Lagos)
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