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abayomiferreira@yahoo.co.uk Bromley, Kent, England

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THE IMPERATIVES FOR COALITION BUILDING AMONG NIGERIAN POLITICAL PARTIES

he disappointing trend of party political interactions on the Nigerian political terrain since the formal removal of military dictators in May 1999 has rightly, generated some public discourse in the recent past. The key issue is the persistently yawning gap that separates the interests of 126 million Nigerians from the ambition and programmeless rule of the politicians in power.

The ruling political parties are parochial in nature, composed of self-seeking politicians with an anti-development psyche and orientation. Our country and peoples remain trapped at the tailspin of international economic exploitation as the perpetual victims of heavily superior foreign economies and contemporaneous endogenous exploitation. One incontrovertible evidence is the absence of any impact on the quality of living of the people by the 1,815 trillion naira that was earned from the oil and gas sales to the outside world by Nigeria in the year 2003.

Aside from earnings derived from other products and services to the international community, as well as domestic economic activities in the same year, Nigeria in the first five months of 2004 earned approximately the same 1,800 trillion naira from the sale of petroleum alone. Whilst the quality of life in the internationally dominant economies keeps improving with the cost of living becoming cheaper for their peoples, Nigerians, an economically significant segment of the global victims of globalisation continue to wallow in abject poverty without any perceivable hope of an escape into quality living in the 21st century.

Without the public discussants stating it so clearly, this hopeless economic situation demands an appraisal of the political setting, in particular, for a new approach to political power and for a government with a programme that will concentrate its efforts and mobilise public energies towards the rapid economic development and social reorganisation of our society. The present ruling political parties of the PDP, ANPP, and AD must inevitably accept historical responsibility for the hopeless and apparently helpless cul de sac into which our peoples have been pushed.

One theoretically sound suggestion that has been publicly expressed to extricate our peoples and country from the cul de sac is a working coalition of the "smaller political parties." As appealing as the idea appears, there are certain conditions that are imperative for such a coalition to be not only enduring and sustained, but also to achieve the highly desirable national objective. The causes of why those " small parties" are small are obvious, but we do not need to dwell on the genesis of their situation to develop the needed cure. The reasons indeed reside in the dominant political parties And include:

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• Significantly, denial of their constitutional rights to funding

• Sustained embryonic status in terms of organisation

• Poor level of political education and awareness among their members

• Equally low political consciousness among the entire population.

The government political parties of the PDP, ANPP, and AD are funded indirectly from the public treasuries, simply by being in power. Their members, the few members that they have do not pay any dues. Thus, essentially, their political strength is not in numbers, and certainly not in programme or ideology, for they lack all these ingredients.

From first principles and deductions, a coalition of the truly peoples' political parties, to be enduring and effective must be conceived and constructed on the following conditions and parameters.

1. The coalition must be on an ideological platform.

   That platform will be clearly pro-people. The members will not go into politics or government to make money but to promote the political programme that will raise, in a short period, the quality of life of Nigerians to the level, which is in tandem with standards of the early years of the 21st century. Today, 100.8 million Nigerians belong to families, which live on less than 5,000 (five thousand) naira for each family in one year. It is certainly not right to be so.

   The crucial issue in Nigerian politics is the current and long-standing inaccessibility of these 100.8 million Nigerians to the benefits of the immense resources of our, their country. Of all the 30 registered political parties, I submit that only five (5) are qualified to belong to the coalition which we are describing. The leaders of the People Redemption Party PRP, Democratic Alternative DA, National Conscience Party NCP, Movement for Democracy and Justice MDJ, and the Nigerian Advance Party NAP should spend this period of confusion in Nigeria's political party practice to evolve the ideological criteria that will make it for their members and parties to work together.

   The coalition cannot be open to political parties and their clones, which have collaborated over the past 38 years with predators who descended on our peoples and country in the garbs of military dictators to ravish our resources and decimate the society in all aspects of human interactions, politically, economically, socially and culturally. Such politicians have their homes in three ruling parties and all those that broke away from them.

2. The coalition must have a minimum programme in government.

   That minimum must be clearly spelt out to our peoples, and indeed the entire world. That programme, inevitably must address immediately the sustained situation of poverty in which our peoples are immersed. That programme must be indigenous and not a hand-down from foreign exploiters or the International Monetary Fund IMF or World Bank. That programme will necessarily include:

   • Full employment, to replace the current despicable situation where 40 million Nigerians are jobless, including 7 million young university graduates. There is enough work for all in our backward and undeveloped country. To tackle the state of non-development, our people should be put to work to build the facilities for an enlightened and educated citizenry who live in socially acceptable houses, with regular supply of water and power, able to travel to work and return home in decent vehicles (not okada) on decent roads that encourage respectable human interaction, whose children go to school when the parents are at work, and who are adequately remunerated for their individual contribution to the national economy.

   • A minimum wage of 30,000 naira per month, which we have assessed as the salary that will provide acceptable human standards and quality of living to a Nigerian family at this time and age and at the present quality of the national currency.

   • Massive agricultural activities to provide sustainable jobs for millions and simultaneously return our peoples to three square meals a day and materials for industrial production.

   • Full access of the people to healthcare and the children to education.

   • Massive housing development to provide good shelter for all by 2015.

3. The political parties in the coalition must have organisational qualities for mass membership. The members will make periodic subscriptions to run the parties. There must be intra-party programmes for political education such that national political development is assured. It is the ignorance of the people that the politicians of the PDP, AD, ANPP and their breakaway friends exploit to dominate the political scene.

A political party with informed members at all levels of organisation will send quality persons into government. This country has existed as a political unit for a century, whilst the peoples have been in locus for many centuries. Nigerians contribute, like others to the world economy, yet they do not derive due benefits from the outcomes of world economy and knowledge. The problem is the politicians in power.